


I wander all the while

by comeaftermejackrobinson, MissingMissFisher (bokchoynomad)



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Body swap challenge, F/M, Gen, Guaranteed happy ending, MFMM Year of Tropes, Not What It Looks Like, Trust Us!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-20 09:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10660152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comeaftermejackrobinson/pseuds/comeaftermejackrobinson, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokchoynomad/pseuds/MissingMissFisher
Summary: Phryne Fisher wakes up one morning to an empty house. She then encounters Jack, Mac, and others throughout the day. But, they all respond to her oddly, leaving her even more baffled until she comes to a very shocking and bodily realization.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, @comeaftermejackrobinson and I have been plotting on and off about how much fun it would be to write a phic together some time soon! Well, our muses have struck, and we decided to take the leap with our own take on this month's MFMM "body swap" trope fic challenge! Hope you all enjoy reading it as much as we are enjoying writing it!
> 
> P.S. We were inspired to use the lyrics from the song "All Dead, All Dead," by the band, Queen, for the title as well as relevant lyrics from some of their other phabulous songs for the rest of this story. 
> 
> P.S. Maybe we'll need to create a playlist for this phic too!

_ Memories, my memories _

_ How long can you stay _

_ To haunt my days _

_ She came without a farthing _

_ A babe without a name _

_ So much ado about nothing _

_ Is what she'd try to say _

_ So much ado my lover _

_ So many games we played _

_ Through every fleeted summer _

_ Through every precious day _

 

_ - _ Queen _ , All Dead, All Dead _

 

 

It wasn’t altogether unusual for the Honourable Phryne Fisher to wake up to complete silence given her penchant for arising later in the day. Shaking the last vestiges of her exhilarating and shocking dreams from her unconsciousness, she sat up and realized that she had fallen asleep in her clothes from the day before. 

 

Rising to her feet, she glided over to her wardrobe door and began sifting through her options based on what her schedule would entail. When nothing came to mind, she decided to go seek out any indication of where Dot might be to ask her companion’s opinion.

 

Making her way down the stairs, she was struck by the chilly atmosphere of the house that was still cloaked in thick silence, but for the ticking of one of the clocks somewhere.  _ Perhaps best to consider something warmer before venturing outdoors then _ , she mentally noted to herself.

 

She was about to round the corner once she reached the bottom of the steps, when she noticed the large variety of flowers gracing the parlour and overtaking the dining room table as well. There were mainly large arrangements of lilies, but also other extravagant styles as well.

 

_ Curiouser and curiouser _ , she thought. It wasn’t her birthday or anyone else’s as far as she could remember. She couldn’t recall any major holiday or event. Perhaps Aunt Prudence had signed her up to help with some charity event or other that required the large amount of floral arrangements. Again, Dot would be able to inform her if this was to be the case. Encouraged by the thought, she resumed her steps towards the kitchen.

 

Even this usually bustling room was uncharacteristically still. Everything looked tidy, and a few dishes drying on the sideboard indicated some presence of her household’s existence. Most likely, Mr Butler and Dot had gone to the market or on some other errand. She poked her head out the back door and noticed that the Hispano wasn’t in its usual place either. Perhaps Bert or Cec had taken it out as they usually did to ensure things were all in good running order.

 

Feeling a tad restless and lightheaded, she decided to go for a walk and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine. Maybe she’d go surprise Jack at the station and see if he was available for a spot of brunch. Pleased with herself for deciding on this course of action, she made her way back towards the foyer, and grabbed the hat hanging on the hook before breezing out the front door.

 

Despite the sunshine, it was a brisk and windy day, which didn’t bother Phryne in the least. After about half an hour of trekking along the foreshore, the desire to talk to someone had her look up at a tram that was about to depart. Grabbing onto the pole, she swung herself onto the platform and stayed there as the vehicle gained speed and headed in the direction of town. Once she recognised the buildings near the vicinity of City South Station, she hopped off when the tram next slowed down, and eventually found herself outside the building’s familiar brown doors. 

 

She slipped through the entrance and kept heading towards Inspector Robinson’s office when she noticed Hugh had a dazed and anxious expression as he listened raptly to whoever was holding his attention on the other side of their telephone conversation. Noticing that Jack’s office door was slightly open, she continued right on through in her usual manner with a witty greeting on the the tip of her tongue. Only to be greeted once again by silence and the unsettling emptiness of the space where she would usually expect to find her partner. In fact, his desk was uncharacteristically clear of its usual clutter of case files.

 

At that moment, she could hear voices out by the front desk. She stepped behind the slightly open door to listen to Hugh explain to one of the other constables that Inspector Robinson wouldn’t be coming into work that day. That he was still on leave, and no, Hugh wasn’t certain when their superior officer would be returning yet. 

 

Baffled by this unexpected information and ignoring the slight twinge of anxiety that it brought to her, Miss Fisher decided to discover the reason for Jack’s uncustomary absence. Having long ago ascertained his residential address (that she may or may not have driven past out of sheer curiosity, of course, because one never knew when one might need to locate him urgently when he happened to be off duty), the lady detective set out to solve this latest puzzle that made up the enigmatic inspector.

 

She eventually found herself standing on the pavement outside of Jack’s small bungalow. Suspecting he was inside, Phryne sailed up the front step after glancing at his motorcar parked out front. Tapping her foot impatiently when he didn’t answer her knock, she was surprised to find the door handle unresistant to her touch when she tested it. The door swung open and she swept inside.

 

“Jack?” She called out to alert him to her presence. “Are you here?”

 

She paused briefly to glance about the cozy-looking sitting room that she could spy to the left of the tiny entry way. It was surrounded by tall, oak bookshelves filled books and more interesting and seemingly random bits of paraphernalia than his office at the station. Several piles of books crowded the floor around a worn, leather wingback chair nestled into the far corner. The sight warmed her heart and prompted a fond smile to light her features.

 

Stepping to the next door, she glanced around the tiny, yet tidy kitchenette, and then tried the door across the hall that revealed the bathroom. She could see through the windows of the door straight ahead that it led to the back garden. 

 

She then focused her attention on the one remaining door that she had yet to try. Knowing that it would lead to the inspector’s bedroom, she was still nevertheless surprised to find him there fast asleep despite it being well past midday. Immediate concern had her rushing to his side where she leaned over to touch his forehead, which thankfully didn’t feel feverish.

 

“Jack?”

 

He stirred slightly and called out her name in an anguished tone without waking up. The sound pierced her to the core. 

 

“Jack, wake up. I'm right here. Can you hear me?”

 

Still asleep, he turned towards the sound of her voice with a scrunched up expression as though he were in great pain. 

 

“Phryne!” He cried out in distress, lifting his hands to cover his face, and curled onto his side away from her.

 

Without any further thought, Phryne instantly climbed into the bed right next to him. She wrapped herself around him, making soothing sounds until the tension in his body ebbed away and he returned to a deep sleep. Before long, she found her dozing off as well nuzzled against his back and enveloped by his warmth and the fragrance that was uniquely, well,  _ his _ .

 

She wasn’t sure how long they remained there together, but she jolted awake from the return of her previous night’s dreams. The sense of exhilaration from hurtling at great speeds was again interrupted by a sense of great shock. Her consciousness registered immediately that she wasn’t alone and she ripped her eyes open to find Jack kissing her in near desperation.

 

“Phryne,” he murmured, “I’ve dreamt of this for so long.” His lips trailed across her face, flickered against her jaw and then down towards her neck.

 

“Oh yes, Jack!” She responded eagerly. “So have I...” She basked in this very moment that she had imagined countless times and in so many variations. She never imagined it would be happening in Jack’s bed, however!

 

“I’m so sorry, Phryne. Please forgive me!” He whispered against her skin. “But, I never had the chance to tell you.” 

 

“Tell me what, Jack? Don’t stop what you’re doing though!”

 

“How much you mean to me,” he continued in between kisses that reached lower down her decolletage. “How unbearable it is that I never got the chance to let you know…”

 

“Let me know what?”

 

“To tell you… how much I love you, Phryne.”

 

The unexpected declaration startled her so much that she pushed herself away from his arms and sat up immediately. Fear raced up her spine, compelling her to climb out of the warm bed.

 

Before she could respond, she was even more shocked to witness tears coursing down the inspector’s face before he once again turned away from her in anguish and fell back into a deeper and fitful sleep.

 

The entire experience left her reeling so much that she didn’t question her sudden instinct to flee. There would be time enough to figure out why Jack was acting so strangely, and why he had taken unexpected leave. But she wouldn’t get anywhere with him in this state, unfortunately.

 

On that thought, she decided to go the other person she had been able to count on to help her through any conundrum for longer than she could remembered. She straightened herself out, gave Jack one last lingering look of mixed affection and anxiety, and whisked out the door.

 

It was time to visit Mac.


	2. Chapter 2

_All Dead All Dead_

_All the dreams we had_

_And I wonder why I still live on_

_All Dead All Dead_

_And alone I'm spared_

_My sweeter half instead_

_All Dead_

_And Gone_

_All Dead..._

 

\- Queen,  _All Dead, All Dead_

 

 

 

Dr. Elizabeth MacMillan was down at the morgue in the hospital, where her friend Phryne Fisher found her that afternoon. The younger woman cracked the cold, steel door open after her knock went unanswered. She could hear Mac quietly talking to herself; the doctor did this sometimes when she was working alone, especially if she was having a busy, tiring day.

She had her white coat on over her three piece suit, complete with a tie and all. She was standing with her back to the door, and she didn’t turn back when Phryne let herself into the dimly lit room.  

“Mac…” She called her friend’s name.

The woman turned around slowly, took off her reading glasses (the years didn’t come alone, oh no) and put them away in the pockets of her cream-colored trousers. The dissection table was empty and clean at the moment. She had probably finished work recently and had been checking her notes before Phryne’s arrival.

“Mac, you won’t believe what happened!” Phryne started, relieved that she was finally in the company of her dear friend and confidante.

Phryne had gone to see Mac because she knew her better than anyone else in the world (anyone except, perhaps, a certain inspector, but since it was _him_ she wanted to talk about), so the physician was her best option. She couldn’t talk about Jack with the man himself! Mac would surely know what to tell her. Phryne could be stubborn and proud sometimes, but she could be humble when she wanted and when it was needed. She knew very well that in the matters of the heart no one was more sensible and more honest than Mac. Whatever the doctor thought she would tell her, not a care in that red head of hers if what she considered the truth wasn’t exactly what Phryne wanted to be told at the moment.

Oh, yes, the Honourable Phryne Fisher was positive that nothing in the world would do her better in these circumstances than having a heart-to-heart with her best and dearest friend. She was already feeling much better, more calmer and less anxious just by being in the same room as the other woman, her presence a warm, familiar source of comfort.

Mac’s reaction to seeing her there, however, was not the one the black-haired woman expected, for nothing would have prepared her to be on the receiving end of the disappointed tone with which she spoke to her.

  
“Oh, Phryne Fisher, I can’t believe the messes you get into!” She said, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and index finger, shutting her eyes tightly and breathing in sharply. The expression on her face was clearly one of annoyance.

“What are you talking about?” Phryne asked her, not able to prevent her high pitched voice. Mac’s eyes were still shut tightly. She was still not looking at her. What was she referring to? What mess could she possibly be talking about? (Not that Phryne wasn’t known for getting herself in all sorts of messes- oh, no, she did that quite frequently! She just couldn’t single out exactly what mess her friend could be scolding her about at that very moment).

A possibility occurred to Phryne, and the question was leaving her mouth before she had time to process the words in her brain, her tongue developing a mind on its own and pushing them out:

“Has Jack been in contact with you? Have you spoken to him about what happened today at his home?”

Could it be that the inspector had contacted her dear friend and told her about their brief, but very emotional encounter earlier that day? She didn’t think Jack would be the type to do that. He was a private person. He was a noble man. He did get along with Mac, but they didn’t usually spend time with one another outside of their working relationship. Or did they? Perhaps, he had thought it would be a good idea to ask the doctor for advice, since she knew Phryne so well. But, that didn’t seem quite possible either. It wasn’t like Jack, no, to reveal something so private, even to her own best friend.

Her Jack wasn’t like that. Her Jack wouldn’t do that.

But if Mac didn’t know about what had happened at Jack’s from the inspector’s mouth (and no one but the inspector could have told her, for no one else knew, but the two of them, that is, Jack and Phryne) then what was this all about?

Mac walked past her, her eyes fixed on the door and avoiding Phryne’s face. There was a tint of anger in her voice when she spoke next, with her hand wrapped around the door knob, and her head tilted to the right and pressed against her shoulder. Her back was once again to Phryne, who had turned quickly on her  heels when her friend had walked right past her.

“Oh, Phryne Fisher, will we ever forgive you your stubbornness? You stupid woman!”

“Mac, wait a moment!” Phryne was quick to protest, her voice rising again. Anger was mixed with the confusion she had been already feeling ever since she had left the inspector’s house.

She went out of the morgue and followed her down the hallway. The doctor was walking quickly, as if she were trying to get away from her. The hallway was empty, and in that moment to Phryne it seemed longer than any other one she’d ever been in.

“If you’re cross at me for something I did, at least have the decency to tell me what it is because I do not know!” Phryne said, her patience wearing thin, and the constant feeling of anxiety that had made its nest in the pit of her stomach finally getting the best of her.     

Mac turned at the corner and kept on walking without flinching one bit. Phryne was about to follow her, determined to demand that her friend explain whatever it was she had done that had the doctor so upset and angry with her, when someone from behind her called out her name.

“Miss Phryne!”

She knew that voice, she could have recognized it anywhere and everywhere now, for it had been a part of her life practically since Phryne had returned to the Antipodes.

It was Jane.

She turned around, surprised to see the girl there at the hospital (Why wasn’t she at school?), but at the same time, she was oddly comforted because her name on her ward’s lips had been the sweetest, most calming thing she had heard since she’d woken up that morning to a silent, empty house.

“Jane!” She exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Why are you not at school?”

She cupped the young girl’s face in her hands and looked her in the eyes. Jane’s eyes, that had always been so bright and sweet, were reddish and swollen. Her face was pale, and she looked like she had been sick or was about to be sick.

“Oh! Miss Phryne!” The girl wrapped her arms tightly around Phryne, and she hugged her tightly.

“Jane, what are you doing here?” Phryne repeated. She was feeling more and more desperate with each passing second.

What was going on? Why was Jane at the hospital looking like a ghost? Had something happened to her and Phryne hadn’t been notified?

“Are you all right, darling? Is everything all right?” She took a step back from the girl (which proved difficult and required a little bit of strength, since Jane was determined not to let her go from her embrace). Phryne looked her up and down as if trying to find clues that could tell  what was wrong.

“Oh, Miss Phryne!” Jane kept crying, tears now running down her freckled-covered, round face. “Miss Phryne!”

“Jane, please!” Phryne insisted. “Please tell me at once what is going on!”

“I came down here to see Dr. MacMillan,” Jane began, talking at a very rapid speed.

_What did Jane need to see Mac for?_ Phryne immediately wondered.

“She just left the morgue. You just missed her…”

“Oh, Miss Phryne!” Jane cried again. “I can’t explain it to you, what is going on! I have to show you!” Jane took Phryne’s hand in one of hers.

“Show me?” Phryne asked, more and more puzzled and frantic with each passing second. “Show me?” She repeated. “Show me what, Jane?”

The girl continued to pull at her hand instead of answering, and so Phryne followed her. Jane led her to an upper floor, to a room in a private wing of the hospital.

She remembered being there once before, many years ago, when she was still living in Collingwood, and her clothes were hand-me-downs. When they didn’t have a dime to their name, and her father drank away the money that supposedly was to buy food for their starving family.

Her cousin Arthur had been really ill. They had expected the worse, but he had miraculously pulled through. He always did, Arthur. He always made it, perhaps, because deep down he knew what his death would do to his poor mother.

But, that one time, he had been really ill, Phryne remembered. They had hospitalized him, and they had told Aunt Prudence and Uncle Edward that there wasn’t much left to do. They had to wait. They had to pray. It hadn’t been that long after Janey’s disappearance, so the whole family took the news really hard. Margaret had been there for her sister at the time while she waited for what they had told her was the inevitable, and Phryne had gone along with her.

She remembered sitting there, outside that hallway with rooms that were meant for people that had been born under circumstances very different from hers. Those people had money, so much more money than she’d ever had. And they had food on the table every day, and warm clothes in winter, and they went to school and did well, and they never wanted for anything, not really. And they had toys, too. And tins of biscuits. And yet - Phryne remembered she had thought back then - and yet bad things like illness and hardship happened to them, too. Money and status weren’t any guarantees. Her cousin had probably gotten better medical attention than she would ever have if she ever became ill- perhaps that was the only difference, that when illness and hardship happened to the rich, they were actually give a chance at fighting it. Whereas, the poor simply didn’t.

_Perhaps if we had had money,_ she had thought back then while she watched her mum as she told Aunt Prudence and Uncle Edward she knew what the loss of a child felt like, _perhaps the police would have looked for Janey more. Perhaps they would have found her… Perhaps._

She shuddered at the memory and quickly pushed it to the back of her mind.

Thus, Phryne knew exactly where Jane had taken her. That was the part of the hospital destined for patients that came from families like Aunt Prudence’s and now, because a long line of Fisher men had all died prematurely within days of each other, for people like her.

“Jane… Has someone been hurt?” Phryne asked her, fear rising inside her. “Has there been an accident?”

The names of the people she loved the most and that hadn’t been at her house that morning came in flashes to her: dear Dot, Mr. Butler, her Aunt Prudence, Cec and Bert… For some reason even the face of Jane’s birth mother appeared before her eyes for a split second.

“Yes!” the girl said, breathlessly.

And, she pushed the door open and stood back so Phryne could step inside.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woweee...thank you sooo much for the flood of awesome comments and feedback for the first few chapters of our collaborative writing efforts, dear friends! 
> 
> Fret not, for we have been working hard to bring you this next installment that we hope will help to calm those nerves, save more fingernails from a chewed demise, as well as blood pressure rates to resume normal regularity. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this next part...all on Dr Mac's orders!

_ All dead, all dead _

_ At the rainbow's end _

_ And still I hear her own sweet song _

_ All dead, all dead _

_ Take me back again _

_ You know my little friend's _

_ All dead and gone _

_ All dead and gone _

\- Queen, All Dead, All Dead

 

 

The first thing that assailed her senses as she entered the dimly lit room was the strong musk of lilies and roses that threatened to overpower the antiseptic odour common to medical endeavours and facilities (and one that she had already spent the last decade attempting to scrub from her memory).

Through the forest of floral arrangements, she caught her first glimpse of Aunt Prudence who was facing the door from her seat by the lone hospital bed. Her aunt was staring down at her agitated hands that were wringing a handkerchief nestled on her lap. She wore her customary frown, and seemed to be listening intently to the person sitting across from her.

Taking another tentative step closer, Phryne was relieved to see Dot’s profile as her companion turned her head to see who had just entered the room. Clutching an open Bible in her lap, Dot sent a tremulous smile at the newcomers before returning to her auditory recitation of scripture.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

“Jane! Stop dawdling by the door like that, my girl,” Aunt Prudence suddenly broke out of her reverie. “You’re letting that horrible draft come in! Hurry on in!”

“It’s all right, Aunt Prudence,” Phryne defended her ward. “It’s like the blooming Sahara in here so I should think some ventilation in this sauna would be a good thing!”

Mrs Stanley responded by shaking her head in resignation and glancing at the bed’s occupant again before resuming her earlier pose.

With mounting trepidation, Phryne finally reached the end of the bed and gasped audibly with a sudden step backwards when she found herself looking down at...her own sleeping features!

“B-but...how is this possible?” Phryne stammered, looking wildly between her aunt and companion. “What on earth is going on?”

Dot stopped reading abruptly to cover her face over her hands as she broke into tears. Jane came up behind her and wrapped a comforting arm around her friend’s shoulder as she glanced over in concern at her guardian.

“I’m not sure what to think any more about this entire cursed situation, my dear,” Aunt Prudence spoke in a wobbly voice. “We’ll just have to wait until Dr MacMillan returns soon to give us an update.”

“I just saw her downstairs,” Phryne began to impart just as the door once again swept open and the woman herself entered in her usual blustery manner. “Mac! What’s happening?”

All eyes in the room zoomed in onto the doctor expectantly as she marched over to the bed where Dot and Jane moved back to give her more room.

“I’ve finished my shift, but wanted to come up as soon as I could before I went home,” she said to no one in particular as she began to methodically go through her checks. “Have you noticed any changes?”

“I certainly have,” Phryne exclaimed at the same time as her aunt.

“Nothing as dramatic as a few hours ago, Dr MacMillan,” Prudence reported. “Things have seemed to settle back down again.”

“No, they haven’t! In fact, I’d say things have become a good deal more dramatic in case anyone hasn’t noticed!” Phryne crossed her arms and walked over to the large window. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing.

“Miss Phryne did call out for the inspector again once in the past half hour,” Dot informed the doctor as she watched the woman expertly examine her dear Miss. “As well as to shout out your name, Doctor, which is why Jane went down to search for you just now.”

“That’s because I was trying to get your bloody attention, Mac!” Phryne interjected as she whirled around to face the bed again. “Like I’m trying to do again right now.” She waved her hands in front of her friend who stopped what she was doing suddenly and looked up to the ceiling.

“You bloody, stupid woman, Phryne Fisher!” the red-haired woman murmured with more than her usual impatience. “Can’t you see what you’re putting us all through?”

“Well, no, actually,” She huffed in exasperation. “Especially when I’m not even sure what has actually happened yet…” she trailed off with a questioning look at Jane who started to open her mouth to reply before she was interrupted.

“Has anyone been in touch with Inspector Robinson recently?” The doctor asked abruptly as she glanced around at the group surrounding the bed.

“Er, well, yes,” Phryne began to admit with some hesitation. “But, he wasn’t exactly himself.”

“I believe Hugh has been trying to contact him,” Dot confirmed. “We had hoped Inspector Robinson would be encouraged by the fact that....” She sniffed suddenly as another bout of tears began trickling from her eyes, a sign that powerful emotions were preventing her from continuing the conversation.

“He certainly didn’t seem so when I went to see him just now,” Miss Fisher stated flatly, not wanting to talk about her euphoric and startling experience with Jack earlier. Especially in front of Aunt Prudence!

“Hmmm,” Mac muttered noncommittally as she flipped through the medical chart that she picked up from the bedside table. “All the vital signs are still showing strong, blood pressure is just fine, and heart and respiratory rates are regular.”

“And thankfully, all the bruises have faded now,” Dot spoke up having recovered somewhat. “They aren’t even visible anymore.” Phryne stepped closer to scrutinize her sleeping face with alarm.

“I recommend that we continue with the medication since it seems to have done its job in preventing any brain swelling, especially from the frontal point of impact,” Mac directed her comments towards Prudence Stanley. “However, as I have previously explained, treatments at this facility are very limited for cases such as these.”

“What treatments? What case?” Phryne asked. “What’s happened? What’s wrong with me?”

“I agree, Doctor MacMillan,” Aunt P agreed somberly. “I’ve already been in contact with the hospital director at St Benedict’s. I went to school with the woman whose family owned the former mansion and think it’s a fine establishment. They are more than prepared to take the dear girl soon as you feel she’s ready to be moved, Doctor.”

“That private hospital at the former Coonil estate?” Phryne asked her aunt and then Mac. “But, why would I need to go there?”

“I’m sorry this has happened, dear girl,” Aunt Prudence said, lifting her hand to grasp her niece’s still one that lay on the hospital cover. “I’ll make sure you’re more than well cared for. I’ve already notified your mother and father who have agreed this is the best course of action.”

“What? Don’t I get a say in any of this?”

Mac finished jotting some notes down onto the medical chart and returned it to the table. She then leaned over to take her oldest friend’s other hand and gave it a gentle squeeze before straightening up.

“We should make all the arrangements to have Phryne moved to St Benedicts by the end of the week if no further improvements have occurred,” her best friend resumed in her professional voice. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning. In the meantime, I suggest you all return home now and get some rest as well.” She then turned and exited the room as briskly as she had arrived.

“No, this can’t be happening,” Phryne again protested. “Won’t someone please tell me what is going on?”

This time, Dot buried her head into her hands and leaned against the bed in a renewed bout of weeping. Aunt Prudence shuffled to her feet and reached across to lay a comforting hand onto the maid’s head.

Before she could say another word, Phryne looked down when she felt a hand gently interlock with her own. Jane began tugging her towards the room’s door, so Phryne allowed her ward to lead her back out into the corridor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> St Benedict’s Hospital was an actual private hospital that had been founded by Rose Hanigan (1864-1952), who was known as Mother Francis, from the Order of the Sisters of Mercy. The hospital began on the former Coonil Mansion estate in Melbourne in 1920. (Link about this can be found here: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hanigan-rose-10410])


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are so thrilled by your response to this story that we have begun fearing you... No, not really. We love you all, and the beautiful, encouraging comments you have written for this story. We are posting this now to soothe your fears, and we hope you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> Thank you all once again, you are truly wonderful.

_ Her ways are always with me _

_ I wander all the while _

_ But please you must forgive me _

_ I am old but still a child _

\- Queen, All Dead, All Dead

 

 

“How did this happen?”

Aunt Prudence and Dot were still inside the hospital room. After Dr. MacMillan had left, the dear girl had resumed the reading of passages from her Bible to the sleeping form of Phryne Fisher. The religious words falling on deaf ears since the very essence of her, the soul that inhabited the exoticly beautiful vessel of flesh, bones and nerves, was currently sitting outside in the waiting area, in the company of her ward.

“You crashed your motor car,” Jane explained. “You were driving home after a night out at the Adventuresses’ Club. You had met with your friend Gerty Haynes and the other members there for dinner. Don’t you remember any of it?” Jane asked Miss Phryne, her teary, pleading eyes big as saucers. 

Phryne shook her head. She didn’t remember anything. The very last thing she could recall before waking up that morning was the freeing sensation, the adrenaline rising up from the pit of her stomach that she always felt when she drove her treasured Hispano-Suiza. The wind blowing, her scarf flying behind her, the delicious notion of being alive and in control. Her hands on the wheel. She loved being behind the wheel, both literally and metaphorically.

But she didn’t remember dinner with Gerty, or the Adventuresses Club meeting, or the crash.

“You lost control of the vehicle, got off the road and crashed the Hispano-Suiza against a tree,” Jane went on. “Constable Collins was among the policemen that were called at the scene. He arrived there shortly after the ambulance had left. He recognized the car… Or, well, what remained of it.”

“What happened next?” Phryne asked anxiously.

“You were bruised badly. They treated your injuries. Dr. MacMillan and Aunt Prudence made sure only the best doctors and nurses worked your case. We were hopeful the first days,” Jane said, “expecting that you’d wake up soon. But, when you didn’t…” She took Miss Phryne’s hand in hers again and caressed her knuckles, as if she couldn’t believe that she was actually touching her, feeling the warmth of her skin. “You wouldn’t wake up, you wouldn’t respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound. They told us you’d slipped into a coma.”

“Head trauma,” Phryne whispered to herself. She’d seen comatose soldiers in the war. She couldn’t remember any of them waking up. 

They hadn’t.

“How long has it been?” Phryne asked Jane, a note of desperation in her voice.

“Six weeks.”

The words echoed inside her head. Six weeks of her life she’d been completely absent from this world and the lives of those she loved. She still was. For some unknown, incomprehensible reason she was sitting there with Jane, completely aware of herself- she could feel her heartbeat, the blood pumping in her veins, the air filling her lungs every time she took a breath- but at the same time she was laying on a hospital bed, had been laying on a hospital bed for a month and a half, unable to regain consciousness. She didn’t know how that was possible. Was she dreaming? Was this a dream? Could comatose people have such very vivid dreams? If she was there with Jane, how could she also be there in the room where Dot was silently crying with her Bible clutched so tightly in her hand her knuckles were white as pearls?

“This is not possible,” she said out loud to Jane. “How can this be happening?” She repressed a sob. She did not want to cry in front of Jane; the young girl already looked distressed as it was and Phryne, even though she felt like the world was crashing down on her with the same force she’d crashed her motor car against a tree one night some six weeks ago, did not want to add more anxiety to the poor girl. 

_ One, two, three. Breathe.  _

“How can this be possible, Jane?” she asked again, making an effort to remain as calm as possible. “How can you see me when they just don’t? Mac, Dot, Jack…”

“You went to see the inspector this morning.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“Yes, I did.” Phryne said, choosing not to examine how she’d automatically become instantly defensive at this admission. “There was no one at Wardlow when I woke up. I couldn’t find the car. When I arrived at City South I heard Hugh speaking to other constables- he was telling them the inspector was on leave,” Phryne recounted the events that had taken place that morning. “I worried about him,” she admitted; she tried to make it sound like she worried about the inspector the same way she worried about all her other friends “so I went to his home to check on him.”

She stopped there, perhaps a little bit abruptly for she could tell Jane noticed she wasn’t telling her everything. There was no way she would tell Jane what had happened between her and Jack when she’d been at his home before she realized there was something very wrong going on. The kisses, his warmth, the intimacy they had experienced in those few minutes, his tear-stained face and the words he had said... Jane was young and she needn’t be overwhelmed yet by the complexity of grown up romantic relationships… or in this case the lack of. She had talked to her ward about sex, of course- the girl knew she was the sole owner of her body and that she had a right to make informed choices about it. They had talked about love, about relationships, but it had always been hypothetical. It had never been about Jack. It wasn’t a conversation Phryne was ready to have with her fourteen year-old adoptive daughter. 

Phryne had wanted to talk about it with Mac, and that was why she had gone to the hospital in the first place (or at least that was why this  _ whatever it was that it was _ of hers had gone to the hospital in the first place). But, that had been when she hadn’t known her mortal body (and how very aware of her mortality she was feeling at the moment) had been comatose for the last six weeks. 

Now she couldn’t help but to wonder what exactly had gone on between her and Jack that morning, and would it ever happen again? Would it ever happen to  _ the real her _ , the pale woman without a drop of makeup on her features that needed permanent medical care as things were? Would they ever be able to talk about it? Would words between them ever be said again? Or had those inconsolable sobs he had emitted been the last thing she’d ever hear from her dear detective inspector?

“He didn’t see you, didn’t he?” Jane asked

Phryne chose to lie by omission:

“Right now, I think only you can see me. No one else can.”

_ I thought Jack had known I was there _ , Phryne thought.  _ I thought he knew. I thought what I felt was real, that what happened between us was real. Was he dreaming? Will he remember?  _

They were painful questions, the ones she was asking herself. It was way beyond what she could handle at the moment, and she considered herself to be a woman that could handle a lot. But these raw emotions were becoming too much. It was a lot to take in: the accident, her comatose state, this out of body experience, Jack’s words…

_ One, two, three. Breathe.  _

“I am not surprised that only I can.” Jane said. “I was wondering…” she began, but then she stayed silent for a moment, as if she were looking for the exact words to describe what was on her mind. “I was wondering if it could happen, honestly,” she said, finally. 

“How so?”

“I read it in a book once,” Jane said “that sometimes children, very perceptive and sensible children, can see or sense spirits or ghosts.” She waited for a moment and when Phryne said nothing, simply looked at her expecting her to continue with her explanation, she went on talking: “If a person that has passed away was emotionally distressed at the time, there is this theory I read about how some spiritists think their ghosts will not be able to move onto the other side. The afterlife. So they linger here…”

“I’m not dead.” 

“I know, Miss Phryne!” Jane was quick to say. “I know you are not. But I think you’re trapped there, inside your own head. Your soul, your spirit… It has always been, well, restless and reckless. It wouldn’t like being trapped, right? It wouldn’t like being caged, unable to express itself” Jane was becoming more and more confidence as she explained her theory. “It must be the same with the souls that stay behind after the body that hosted them stops functioning. Your body is still functioning, but you don’t like being its prisoner, do you?”

_ Oh, you sweet, clever girl _ , Phryne thought. She looked at her lovely Jane- this other Jane that life had presented her with, this other Jane she loved so much as she did the sister she’d never stopped missing a single day since her disappearance. 

“No, I don’t like being caged. I don’t like being imprisoned or trapped. I never have,” she admitted, remembering how her father used to lock her up in a cupboard when she misbehaved.

Misbehaving was, in the Collingwood Fisher household, something that ranked from breaking one of the few second-hand dishes they owned to speaking out of place- especially whenever Henry Fisher had a hangover. She had never liked small and dark places, and she believed this was a result of those traumatic days she’d spent in the darkness, with no food and no water and no one to hear to her cries. 

Phryne had actually learned to keep herself from crying, calming herself, during the time she’d spent in the cupboard, for she hated to see how satisfied his father looked when he let her out and saw her tear stained face. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing his cruelness had made her cry. He didn’t want her to see her as weak. She had decided from an early age that he would not break her, and he hadn’t. She hadn’t let him.

So no, she didn’t like being kept in the dark, trapped like some animal. And yes, that was something- the need for freedom, the need to defend it at all costs- that had to do with her spirit, her very essence. So, of course, she wouldn’t even stand being trapped in her own body. 

“So only you can see me…” Phryne said. 

“Yes.”

“You have to tell them, then. Let’s go back in now and you can tell them!”

Jane shook her head from side to side very slowly, a weary expression on her lovely round face that had always reminded Phryne of the full moon. 

“Well, why not?! Why are you hesitating?” She was eager to communicate with them all- Dot, Mac, her aunt…and Jack. 

“Miss Phryne, why do you think that only children can sense or see these spirits?” Jane asked her. “Why do you think other adults can’t see you, only me?” The girl didn’t wait for her guardian to answer- the question was, after all, rhetorical. “They don’t believe in such things. Would you believe me if I told you I can see someone that’s dead or in a coma?” She once again answered her own question. “No, you wouldn’t. Adults are skeptics. They don’t believe in what they cannot see.”

“Dot believes in God,” Phryne said “and she cannot see Him. It’s called faith, believing in something you cannot see...”

She had faith in everyone, every single one of them. Why wouldn’t they have faith in her?

“I know, Miss Phryne…”

“What do you think of telling Dot you can see me?”

“Miss Phryne, Dot is still a little bit scared of wired electricity. Do you think she wouldn’t be scared of a ghost?”

Phryne pondered this for a moment. Poor dear Dot, so clever for some things, so innocent and easily influenced when it came to others. No, Dot would probably think it was all very scary. She didn’t like unnatural things, and Phryne’s detachment from her body definitely counted as one. 

“My aunt, then,” she said. “We’ll tell my Aunt Prudence.”

She made a movement to get up, but Jane quickly grabbed her arm and stopped her. 

“Jane, what’s wrong?” Phryne asked. She couldn’t understand the reason for the expression on Jane’s face, that could only be described as one of utmost worry, almost terror.

“Please don’t tell any of them I can see you,” the girl begged in a small voice.

“Why not?” 

“Because they’ll think I’m mentally unwell. They’ll think I’m just like my mother, seeing things that aren’t there, having hallucinations. And I’m not,” her eyes were filled with tears now. “I’m not like my mother.”

“Oh, dear girl!” Phryne said, holding the child in her arms. Jane rested her head on Phryne’s chest. How could it all feel so real? She could hear a heartbeat, she could feel her warmth enveloping her. She felt the woman’s fingers running through her long hair, her lips pressed on her forehead in a kiss that was meant to soothe her. “You are not like your mother, my Jane,” Phryne assured her. 

“They will think I am,” Jane sobbed. The anxiety and sadness she had been constantly feeling ever since Miss Phryne’s accident had reached its breaking point, and the brave face she’d somehow managed to keep in front of Dot and Aunt Prudence… Well, she simply couldn’t help it, could she? She was a strong, young girl, had always fought to make people consider her one, but Miss Phryne’s kindness and sweetness made her feel so protected, so safe, she let down her guard, all of her defences weakened, and allowed herself to get emotional and really feel the pain and the weight of the situation. Miss Phryne was her safe place in this world, and never in all of her life had Jane wished to feel safer.

“Don’t you cry, my darling Jane,” Phryne whispered in her ear.

“I’m sorry, Miss Phryne!” Jane was sobbing harder, hip-cupping even. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry about, my love.” Her heart was breaking for the girl. “Never apologise for the things you feel, Jane.” She held Jane’s chin up with her fingers and locked her eyes with the girl’s. “If you don’t want to tell them, I won’t make you.”

She knew how difficult Jane’s life had been before she’d found her on that train that night almost a year ago. Phryne saw in Jane a lot of what she saw in herself. The girl was like her in so many ways! It was like looking back in time and being able to observe her fourteen year-old self. She wished she had had someone she could trust back then, someone to listen to her and protect her. Someone to remind her she was capable of doing whatever she wanted, and that she was loved, and that she had worth. That she counted. 

She wanted to be that for Jane, that was why she hadn’t been able to let the girl go when presented with the opportunity. She had decided to give Jane the home she hadn’t had at her age. The family she hadn’t had until she’d started making her own family- Dot, Mr. Butler, Cec and Bert, Mac, even Hugh and the inspector, they were all her family, and she had wanted to share all that with Jane. She wouldn’t make the girl do something she was scared of or that would give her anxiety. She would never forgive herself if she put her through that stress.

The clock was ticking, she knew. She had heard Mac and Aunt Prudence. They were planning to have her moved. She had to stop that, she did, but she wouldn’t pay the price of Jane’s feelings and well-being getting hurt or damaged in the process.

They would have to find another way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the implications of her situation sinks in, Miss Fisher is determined to enlist assistance from a certain detective inspector...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, thank you for all of your wonderful feedback! Hope this next installment continues to redeem us *cough, Quiltingmom, cough*!

_But touch my tears, with your lips_

_Touch my world, with your fingertips._

_And we can have forever_

_And we can love forever_

_Forever is our today_                       

 -Queen, Who Wants to Live Forever

 

Phryne swallowed back the sudden rush of homesickness that wrapped itself around her heart as she stood and watched Cec and Bert’s familiar cab grow smaller and smaller in the distance as it ferried away the majority of her loved ones. Away from the current embodiment of her vitality left standing alone on the pavement. And away from her unusually still shell of a body left battling alone in the sterile hospital room above.

Now that she had finally discovered the truth of her circumstances, the normally self-reliant lady detective felt lost and bereft in a way that she hadn’t felt for a very long time. Not since the day when she couldn’t find her sister all those years ago. Only to experience the same heart-shattering emptiness once again when she had been able to find Janey, or what remained of her, again only a few months earlier.

But that time had been different. Because she had not been alone as she watched in mingled dread and grief as that hole in the earth had widened one shovelful at a time. As the mud, clay and dirt that had finally revealed its secrets, dear Dot and courageous Hugh had been standing by her side as well. And then, just as she first glimpsed that impossibly small skull staring back up at her, she had collapsed under the weight of all the indescribable emotions drowning her in that moment. But, unlike the time she had been crushed by their waves as she ran frantically around the circus grounds all on her own, the second time, she remembered that she had a lifeline. And, she had reached for it...for him. And he had been there for her ever since whenever she needed him.

Now, as she fought to keep afloat from the same onslaught of emotions, Phryne knew that she couldn’t do this all alone. This was no longer just a puzzle to unravel or another case to solve. This was now a matter of life or death. Hers! And damn it all if she just stepped back and allowed nature or fate or whatever one wanted to call it to take its course. It had never been her style, and she wasn’t about to start changing her ways any time soon.

Feeling her usual resolve slide firmly back into place, Miss Phryne Fisher turned on her heels and began to march back out to the main road to find the first tram heading back in the direction from which she had arrived.

It was time to deliver a very uncivil wake up call to a normally civil detective inspector.

 

*-*-*

 

Phryne didn’t hesitate to let herself back in again as soon as she arrived back on the inspector’s doorstep. Quickly glancing around and not noticing any changes from her earlier visit, she immediately headed for Jack’s bedroom.

Only to find it empty.

Concern began to brew as another quick inspection of the remaining rooms still didn’t reveal any trace of the inspector. She turned to glance back out through the front room windows to confirm the visible presence of his motorcar. That only left...she quickly pivoted again and rushed towards the final door at the back of the hallway that she hadn’t yet approached earlier.

Grabbing the well-oiled handle, Phryne pushed the door open and was welcomed by a gentle breeze carrying the delightful scents of jasmine blossoms that caressed her face as she stepped outside. Ever since she had been swept into her life of privilege as a baron’s daughter, the Honourable Phryne Fisher had seen more than enough garden variations to last a lifetime. Even in all of her exotic travels, she had never before encountered such an enchanting world of colours, fragrances and beauty in such a cleverly contained space. The discovery became another gem that she tucked away into the mental case file she kept of her favourite neverending source of mystery.

On that note, she immediately spied the familiar outline of her partner’s back and shoulders leaning back against a charming wrought-iron bench where he was sitting with his head in his hands.

_Jack!_

Her heart leapt at the sight of him, and she paused to drink in the picture he made in what was obviously a place where he spent quite a bit of his time. She slowly made her way towards the bench until she was standing right in front of him. He had thrown on a shirt that was haphazardly buttoned up, revealing tantalizing glimpses of his usually hidden chest to her greedy eyes.

“Hello, Jack,” she greeted him softly, unable to resist resting a hand on his bowed head and moving her fingers against the untamed curls of his hair. He slowly lifted his head and stared up at her with haunted, red-rimmed eyes. Blinking rapidly, he shook his head before squeezing his soulful orbs shut tightly.

“Phryne,” he whispered in a strangled tone. “Why are you back to torture me again?”

“I’m not here to torture you, Jack,” she reassured him. Her pulse began to race both from the unravelled sight and sound of him, but mostly because he seemed to be able to communicate with her directly! “I’m here because I need your help.”

 _And because I need you_ , she added silently with her eyes as his continued to bore straight into hers. At the unspoken questions lingering in his gaze, she traced the hand still tangling his hair down to cup the side of his stoic face. _I need you to tell me that I’m not a shadow._

His lips twitched ever so slightly in a ghostly vestige of Jack’s usual smirk.

“I suppose some things never change,” he murmured with a trace of irony mingled with resignation laced through his tone. “Of course you’d only visit me in a dream because you wanted to inveigle something from me.” He lowered his head again and ran his hands through his unruly hair with a large sigh. “Is it because I haven’t been to visit you at the hospital yet? Because I only just received the message from Hugh…” his voice trailed off. “I was about to get ready to go to the hospital. But, I just needed some extra time to absorb the news that you had opened your eyes. That you had called out for me.”

“Jack,” she called out, deliberately interrupting  him. “Look at me.”

Her heart now beat furiously when he lifted his head and looked up at her expectantly. _He can see me! And hear me!_

“You seem so real, Phryne,” he breathed, lifting his hand to trace her lips. “Just like when you came to me earlier in my dreams. You even felt so real then when I was kissing you, just as I have done countless times in my dreams. But, it was different that time…it felt like you were actually there with me in my bed. Though I knew you couldn’t be because...because...” He blinked and looked away to try to hide the emotions brimming powerfully from within him.

“Did it feel real like it does now?” She asked him, covering his hand that now cupped her cheek and kissing his palm. His eyes widened before he nodded slightly.

“That’s because,” she hesitated slightly as she willed him to understand. “This _is_ real, Jack. I don’t know how, or why, but for some reason, I am really here with you now.”

“Did you finally wake up, Phryne?” She closed her eyes at the sound of hope emanating in his voice. “Miss Williams or Mrs Stanley should have telephoned me! I was just about to head over. We need to get you back there so Dr MacMillan can look you over, and…”

He stopped abruptly when Phryne leaned down to kiss him in order to silence his words. His arms entwined themselves around her waist, pulling her down onto his lap as the two desperately sought comfort from their overwhelming anxieties through this medium of communication that they had previously been denying themselves. But even through the haze of their mounting passion, something inside Phryne’s mind alerted her to the fact that she really needed Jack to stop and understand the truth of her situation. More than ever, she needed her partner’s sharp mind so he could help her discover what was going on because she wasn’t able to even begin to fathom it herself.

With one last searing taste of his lips, she reluctantly pulled away and leaned back so she could see his face clearly.

“I’m so sorry, Phryne,” he immediately began trying to apologise. “Did I hurt you? I shouldn’t have taken such liberties, especially not after what you’ve just endured...”

“Jack!” She placed a finger against his mouth. “Please, listen to me.” He nodded again to indicate that he would. She couldn’t help tracking his slightly swollen lower lip before she continued.

"I need you to trust me, Jack. You must try to understand what I’m about to explain to you. You mustn’t panic.” Again, he nodded, slightly quirking one of his eyebrows as a signal that he once again understood.

“Basically, Jack, no, I haven’t woken up yet,” she rushed on when his eyes once again widened and he loosened his grip slightly from around her body. “And, yes, I just came from the hospital, but...my body is still there. But, I’m also really here right now with you, too. Just like before when I came to visit you when you were still asleep.” She was losing him.

He let go of her completely then, and stood up suddenly after she slid off his lap and stumbled to her feet.

“Jack? What is it?”

“I should have known,” he said with an air of despair hovering over him. “It was too real to be true.” He once again covered his face with his hands and slowly sank back down to the bench.

“Jack! You must believe me!”

“You’re just a figment of my distressed mind, Phryne,” he replied in defeat. “A hallucination of what I want the most right now.”

“What do you mean, Jack?”

“I want...no, I _need_ for you to wake up, Phryne! To be whole, and healthy, and your actual, wonderful self again,” he once again reached out to grasp her, pulling her back towards him so he could bury his face against her. “These last few weeks have been...unbearable for me...” He then began to silently sob as Phryne Fisher found herself once again consoling the only other person who could see and hear her.

Only he thought she was a shadow, because she essentially was one now.


	6. Chapter 6

_All dead, all dead_

_But I should not grieve_

_In time it comes to everyone_

_All dead, all dead_

_But in hope I breathe_

_Of course I don't believe_

_You're dead_

_And gone_

_All dead_

_And gone_

 

\- Queen, _All Dead, All Dead_

 

As an officer of the law, Detective Inspector Jack Robinson had seen his fair share of dead bodies and crime scenes, as well as talked to many victims of hideous crimes or, when it came to murders, their families. It never got better, of course, for he usually met people on the most terrible day of their lives, but after some time it stopped getting worse and it became- horrific as it might sound- natural. Routine. He did well with routines; he was a routinary man. Every case he worked was different, of course, but with time one knew what to expect more or less and how to prepare for it.

 

But nothing could have prepared him for the hell he was put through from the day Miss Fisher had an accident. And, the days onward after that.

 

He had heard the news from Constable Collins the morning after it happened. Motor car crashes weren't his division, Constable Collins assured him he knew, _But you will want to know about this one, Sir,_ the young officer had told him. And his voice had given him away. He had been nervous when he made the phone call, almost choking up on the words. Jack had known something was off, and the moment Constable Collins mentioned her name he just stopped listening, hung up the phone and come undone on the floor.

 

His mind had imagined the worse case scenario, of course. Shaking so much he had had to hail a cab because he didn't trust himself behind a wheel in that moment (he didn't think he'd want to drive a motor car ever again, anyway) and completely numb by the pain of his loss, he had shown up at the scene asking to see her. One last time he wanted to see her, see her exotic, beautiful face, and run a fingertip along the soft skin of her cheeks just once like he hadn't allowed to while she has been alive.

 

“She's in hospital, Sir,” Constable Collins had informed him.

 

“Hospital…”

 

 _The morgue. She is already at the morgue_ , he had thought. He had gotten sick, he hadn't been able to help it. The mental images that assaulted him violently caused him to empty the contents of his stomach by the side of the road. His adored Miss Fisher (did it matter that he'd never told her?  Not that he'd never told her because he'd been a coward), taken to the hospital's morgue where they'd cut into her perfect flesh and bones. The mortician that performed the autopsy, Jack had thought, would have in his or her hands a heart that he had hoped would eventually beat the same rhythm as his own, practically ever since the day they'd met, whether he had acknowledged it at the time or not.

 

Constable Collins had tried to calm him. He remembered that, and the strong, acid smell of his vomit, but he didn't remember much more of that morning. He remembered the chest pain, yes, and the excruciating sensation that something substantial and irreplaceable had been ripped away from him, and that he could feel the loss everywhere in his body . He understood now what they said about the soldiers who after losing a limb in the trenches could still feel something like its 'ghost’ when, in reality, there was nothing to be felt. Phantom pain, he’d heard them call describe it.

 

Nothing. He remembered how he had wished he could feel nothing. What he wouldn't have given to never feel an ounce of sentiment ever again! How unfair it was that he still could feel when Miss Fisher would never feel anything anymore.

 

Someone (Constable Collins) had driven them back to City South. And someone (Constable Collins, again, most likely) had made him a strong cup of tea he hadn't touched as Jack stared at his hands (he really hadn't been staring at them, for everything around him had turned pitch black the moment he heard the news). He had lost the ability to perceive the world around him, a world that didn't have her in it. What was there to perceive, then?

 

That was when Constable Collins had told him:

 

“Dottie just phoned in, Sir. She is out of surgery, Sir. They are hopeful. They have faith. They are waiting for her to wake up, Sir.”

 

And in that moment the worst nightmare he thought he’d ever have to endure ended...and a very different one began.

 

He told himself he'd go see her when she woke up. Days went by and she didn't. He didn't go see her. He drank himself to sleep several times in the course of those six weeks. He cried himself to sleep every day during the course of those six weeks, sometimes drunk, sometimes sober, but always heartbroken. She was there, and at the same time she wasn't. What was a beautiful vessel if it was vacant of the things that made it beautiful? He didn't love her because she was stunning, he didn't love her because her looks had everyone- men and women alike- stare with their breaths held when she walked into a room. He loved the soul that body hosted, the spirit, the essence, that was currently asleep, trapped inside a body that for some reason refused to wake up.

 

He couldn't bear to see her like that. _Caged. Imprisoned. Trapped._  He'd come undone all over again if he saw her like that, and it was one thing to come apart in the privacy of his home, and another to do it in a public place in front of Miss Fisher's friends and family. It had been enough breaking down at the police station a few days after the accident, which had earned him a leave of absence for personal reasons, time undetermined.

 

Now it seemed that the pain he was in had driven him to snap, and he was imagining that everything he loved about Miss Fisher- her essence, her spirit, the very soul of the woman he adored- was for some unexplainable reason detached from her sleeping body. Freed by his lost, unwell, grieving mind. Free like he wanted her to be, free like she'd always chosen to be.

 

In fact, Jack had cried in the arms of his hallucination (it was only slightly later that he pondered how she felt so real? He could have sworn he felt a heartbeat, and she was so warm and so soft. It was impossibly beautiful, like he'd always known it'd be if he ever dared touching her, if he'd ever let himself be touched by her.) He cried until it seemed that he didn't have any tears left. He cried, and she comforted him, and he let her do so, even if he knew she wasn’t more than a figment of his troubled imagination.

 

 _Must be going mad with grief_ , he thought. And yet he held onto her like a castaway holds onto a wooden plank in the sea.

 

“I’ll go see her,” he said, finally. “I’ll go see her.”

 

He had to. He couldn’t run away from her forever. She’d have gone to see him had their roles been reversed in this tragic play written by fate. He had to go, he had to see her, reassure himself that the real Phryne Fisher was there, laying in a hospital bed and in a comatose state. And that the hallucinatory woman he was seeing, the woman that was still sitting by his side, wasn’t more but a mad man’s attempt to feel the void left by the love of his life.

 

“You’ll go see _me_ ,” Miss Fisher told him. “You’ll go see _me,_  and I’ll go with you, Jack. I know how difficult doing this is for you, and I don’t want you to face it alone. I’ll go with you.”

 

Was it strange, that he didn’t want this hallucination to disappear? Was it strange, wrong even, that he took comfort in this presence that only he could see? He’d read a little about how the human brain worked, some research papers and investigations by foreign doctors and scientists. He had done so because he wanted to understand more of what happened to the soldiers that returned from war completely changed. Some of them had hallucinations, too. There were theories that postulated that sometimes hallucinations were created as coping mechanisms after emotional trauma. He fit the description. How wrong was that he’d rather go mad and have her with him like this, even if it was just a figment of his imagination, than go on with a normal life as a sane person and not have her at all?

 

He cupped her face in his hands and looked into those eyes. The real ones, he knew, were closed and no one could tell if she’d ever open them again. But the ones he was staring into at the moment were exactly the same colour, and they held the same fire, the same warmth. They were beautiful. And they were open. And they were looking back at him lovingly.

 

He at least had _this._ How wrong was it that he wanted to hold onto this and never let go? How wrong was it that he felt he could talk to his version of Miss Fisher like he would with the real woman?

 

How wrong was it that he loved this hallucination with the same intensity that he loved the real _her_?

 

“Talk to me, Jack,” she asked softly when she noticed a far away look on his face. “Don’t drift away from me, Jack. Talk to me. You can tell me anything. We’re friends, remember? You can tell me anything.”

 

And so he did. He felt safer than he’d ever had talking to her. She’d never judge him. She’d never laugh at him. She’d just listen. She’d comfort him. And oh, how he needed that!

 

He told her about the morning he had heard about the accident. He told her about the pain he’d felt, and how he’d first thought she’d died at the wheel of her Hispano-Suiza. He spoke freely, more freely that he ever had about anything in all of his life, for the feel of her hands caressing his face, her fingers running through his hair, her lips coming to press kisses on his cheeks and forehead every now and then, it all gave him a sense of peace that he’d lost a long time ago when he’d been shipped off to fight in the Great War.

 

“It affected me to the point the Commissioner forced me to take a leave of absence,” he finished his retelling of the last six weeks. “I am no good to anyone in this shape. Look at me,” he laughed bitterly, and she gave him a sad smile “I’m a bloody mess. Nothing ever consumed me as quickly and as a violently as this pain, not even the war flashbacks,” he confessed.

 

She cradled his head in her hands and pushed him down so he could rest it on her lap.

 

“Dot and Mr. Butler have been by a few times,” he said. “So have Dr. MacMillan and Constable Collins. They’ve been checking on me regularly. Dropping off baskets of food from Mr. Butler, tidying up the house a little. I haven’t felt like cleaning after myself, or cooking meals, or doing anything other than taking turns to sleep and cry.” He was at his most vulnerable, but there was not going back now: it was as if a dam had broken, and feelings wouldn’t stop flooding out of him.

 

“I am very glad and thankful that they did,” Miss Fisher told him. “They know it’s what I would have wanted from them. I would have wanted them to take care of you, look after you.”

 

“They’re very good people, and they all love you so much.” _I love you so much,_ he thought, but he didn’t say the words. The hallucination had disappeared when he had said them that morning after they’d been kissing on his bed. He wondered if his mind was so lost that it had been able to make a perfect replica of Phryne Fisher, so similar to the real one that she reacted the same way she would in a given circumstance.

 

“They care about you too, Inspector.”

 

“They’ve been keeping me up to date. About how you are, I mean. Dr. MacMillan has been really helpful. She’s explained a lot of things about comatose states, and she’s lent me books so I could research on the topic. That’s the only other thing I’ve brought myself to do other than crying and sleeping: reading. Trying to understand why this is happening, what exactly is happening, what you’re going through. I’ve read about several coma cases...” He trailed off. He didn’t want to tell her that most people did not wake up.

 

“Whenever you’re ready to go see my body at the hospital, Jack, I’m ready to go with you.” She changed the subject because she didn’t want to tell him what she was sure he already knew anyway after all the research he’d done: that she couldn’t remember a single case similar to hers that had a happy ending with the patient awakening.

 

*-*-*

 

He arrived at the hospital two hours later, Miss Fisher (or _his_ Miss Fisher, anyway) by his side like she had promised him she’d be. She walked him to an upper floor in the building he’d never been to. She led the way, and he simply followed.

 

Jack took deep breaths as they were nearing the room where she was. He wanted to be sick again. He’d see her in a matter of minutes, he’d see the woman he desperately loved asleep in a hospital bed, in the same state she’d been in for the past six weeks. No one knew if she’d wake up. No one knew how long she’d stay there, asleep.

 

 _One, two, three, breathe,_ he told himself. He instinctively reached for her hand with his, and she took it. It made him feel reassured. Safe. Less alone.

 

When they arrived at the room, she opened the door for him and let him go in first. It was empty of any visitors. Mrs. Stanley and Miss Williams had surely gone home for the day.

 

She was there, her head resting on a fluffy, white pillow. White, tight blankets were draped over her body. Her skin was pale, and she was even more beautiful than he would have ever imagined she’d be without a single drop of makeup on. She looked so peaceful, almost as if she were just taking a nap or sleeping in after a long night out at a party somewhere.

 

But she wasn’t sleeping.

 

His heart broke into a million pieces, and he felt his knees were about to give way. He’d fall, he’d fall on the floor and cry and scream and come undone like he had so many times since she’d had the accident. Like he had that day at City South, the day he’d been forced to take a leave of absence because the pain he felt- the same pain he was feeling right there in the hospital room- was unbearable and made him unable to do anything else. His heart broke for her, and for him, and for that mismatched family of hers that she loved so much, and that had been so supportive of him during those last six weeks in spite of their own terrible pain. His heart broke for the words he never got to say, the words she’d never hear, and for the love story that could have been, but never would.

 

Jack’s eyes filled with tears. He felt a hand on his shoulders- _hers_. The hallucinated hand. It was all so real, though. She even smelled like the French perfume she always wore. But she wasn’t real. He was making her up. He had to. The real Miss Fisher was there, right in front of him, laying in bed. Asleep. Comatose. Her life hanging by a thread, he knew. Even if they chose to give him hope, he knew the truth was that she couldn’t have much time left if she went on like that.

 

His heart broke more when he thought of that.

 

“That’s not me there, Jack,” she said, a tint of sadness in her usually velvety voice. “My body is there, _but I am here._ I’m not there,” she insisted, pointing at the sleeping form on the bed. “I am here. That body is empty at the moment for I am standing right next to you. You have to believe me, Jack, please,” she pleaded with him. “ _Please._ ”

 

“Oh, how I wish you were real!” he sobbed, his wet eyes fixed on Miss Fisher’s mortal body.

 

“Jack, Jack…” She grabbed him by the face and made him look at her. There were tears in her eyes, too, and she sounded desperate. “You have to believe me. Look at me, please,” she said. “Look at me, Jack. Not at the body in the bed. This is the real me. This is the real Phryne. That body is empty. It can’t listen to you, but I can. I can. And you can listen to me, so you have to listen,” she demanded. “You need to help me get back into my body. You need to help me wake up before my aunt decides to have me taken to St. Benedict’s, all right? You have to help me.”

 

He didn’t say a word. He just kept on sobbing, tired and heartbroken and about to give in and curl up on the floor like he’d done so many times in the last few weeks. He felt lost. He felt defeated. There was no amount of comfort this imagined Miss Fisher could give him, not when the real one was right in front of him, the truth of her condition speaking volumes.

 

“I have a scar in the shape of half a heart in the sole of my right foot,” she suddenly said. “It’s from when I was little. I burnt my foot when I was six years-old. The scar looks like a heart split in half. Go on!” she said. “Go on, look at the sole of my right foot! You’ll see the scar. You didn’t know about the scar, I never told you and you never saw it. There is no way I could be telling you this if I were only in your head. Go on,” she insisted once more. “Check the sole of my right foot!”

 

He swallowed hard. He was losing his mind, right?

 

“Please, Jack. _Please._ "

 

He did as he was told. She always got her way with him, damn it! There was no way he could say no to her when she was pleading with him like that, even if she was only an hallucination, like he was sure that she was. He wondered, as he approached the sleeping body in the bed, if his mind would trick him to see that scar she was telling him about. If perhaps he was trying to convince himself that she was real. More hallucinations to make the first one seem real.

 

He really was losing his mind, right?

 

“I’ll do it for you if it makes you feel uncomfortable,” Miss Fisher told him when she noticed how he stood frozen by the foot of the bed. “If you feel that it’s wrong to remove the blanket so you can take a look at my bare feet, I’ll do it for you. I’ll lift the blanket a little so you can see the scar on my right foot. So you’ll know that I am real.”

 

He nodded his head yes, and Miss Fisher proceeded to lift up the blanket and presented him with the soles of her bare feet.

 

And then he saw it. Right there on her right foot, a faded scar in the shape of half a heart. She’d never told him about it, he’d never seen it before. He hadn’t known about the scar until a minute before when she had told him, when she had asked him to look at her right foot so he’d believe her that she was the real, the unique Honourable Phryne Fisher, lady detective and the love of his life.

 

“Do you believe me now, Jack?” she asked him, desperation engulfing her voice.

 

He swallowed hard again.

 

He looked into those haunting eyes.

 

And he nodded his head yes.

 

Everything be damned, he nodded his head yes!

 

Before he knew it, he felt her arms around him, and his immediately gathered her so she could be close to him. They were holding onto each other for dear life, holding onto each other like they’d only done in dreams before that night.

 

“I believe you,” he whispered in her ears, and he couldn’t help but drop a couple of kisses on her hairline. “I believe you.”

 

He did. He didn’t know what was happening or how or why, but he believed her. This wasn’t an hallucination, and oh, was he relieved that the spirit he was seeing was actually her! Was he relieved that he still had her! His partner, his everything, his love.

 

“You have to help me, Jack,” she asked once more. “We have to find a way for me to reunite my body and my soul and wake up before my aunt has me moved. She said she’ll do it by the end of the week if there aren’t any improvements”

 

“Try lying on the bed where your body is,” he said. “Try that, see if you can get inside it.” He felt weird and almost maniacal saying that, but considering the course things had taken… It was worth suggesting, right? Things couldn’t get stranger than this. He was talking to the detached soul of the woman he loved while her body rested right there on a bed in front of them, for God’s sake! Nothing would ever surprise him after this.

 

She tried his idea, but it didn’t work. Every time she’d try to lay down on the bed, she ended up on top of her mortal body. It was very weird, to say the least, seeing two identical women: one unmoving and completely asleep while the other tried to get in bed with her.

 

“This is not working!” Miss Fisher said, frustrated. “Do I really look like that when I sleep?” she asked then, taking a look at her mortal body, a disgusted expression on her face. “This isn’t a flattering image at all!”

 

“I think you look magnificent, Miss Fisher”

 

She looked up at him and smiled, and he smiled right back. And everything be damned, he did believe she was there with him now. That look, that smile, that face- he’d never imagine her beauty and her essence so well, it didn’t matter how much he knew her or how many details about her he’d retained in his mind ever since they had first met. She was the one and only. One of a kind. She could never be imagined so well. She had to be real. She had to be.

 

“Try standing by the bed and closing your eyes. Picture yourself getting back into your body,” he suggested now.

 

She tried that. She tried for several long, frustrating minutes. She focused really hard, imagined getting back inside her body. But nothing happened. Everything stayed the same.

 

They tried some other things, some silly ideas they came up with, like having Miss Fisher hold her mortal body’s hand in the hand that belonged to her projected soul. None of their ideas worked.

 

An hour passed, and they were both tired and frustrated and a little bit angry. And emotionally exhausted (physically exhausted too, in Jack’s case). Miss Fisher wanted to break down and cry, he could tell, and she was doing such a bloody well job fighting back tears.

 

He wouldn’t let her come apart, no. He wouldn’t let her come undone.

 

“We’ll figure this out,” he told her, gathering her in his arms once more. “We’ll figure this out, I promise.”

 

She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, his long hands running up and down her back, comforting her like she had done to him that afternoon in his garden.

 

A sense of calm, some sort of peace, invaded her for the first time ever since learning what had happened to her and the state in which she was. For Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was the most honourable man she knew, and he never made a promise if he wasn’t intending on keeping it.

  
If he was promising they would figure this out, then she believed him. She’d hold onto it, onto him, for it was everything she had right then and there. And everything be damned if she wasn’t going to grab onto it like a castaway grabs onto a wooden plank after a shipwreck.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we learn more about what's been going on through Dot's point of view...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We couldn't leave you hanging until @MissingMissFisher was back in the UK next week...so here's a little something with love from lovely Buenos Aires _and_ Puerto Vallarta!

_Ooh you make me live  
_ _Whenever this world is cruel to me  
_ _I got you to help me forgive  
_ _Ooh you make me live now, honey_  
Ooh you make me live

-Queen, You’re My Best Friend

  
For someone who had been, up until recently, extremely terrified of electricity, Miss Dorothy Williams was now an expert on the most up to date appliances (and their uses). In fact, some might even say she was possessed if they could see her commandeering the new Fisher household hoover as she attacked the parlour’s rugs in an unholy frenzy. Well, it would certainly give Father Grogan a fright, for which she was already preparing to heartily confess and repent from when she attended mass at the end of the week. Yes, at the end of the week after...after...she couldn’t bring herself to even mention it to herself, let alone to Mr Butler or Bert and Cec after they had safely transported her and Jane home following their emotionally exhausting visit to Miss Phryne at hospital earlier.

Considering Dot was on the verge of breaking down again once they had gathered in the kitchen over Mr B’s miraculously appearance of tea and sandwiches, Jane had helpfully stepped in to give the latest update. Even through her latest bout of tears, however, the maid couldn’t help noticing the girl’s sporadic and less than usually exuberant commentary about Miss Phryne’s movements, opening her eyes and calling out, first for Inspector Robinson, and later, for Dr MacMillan. Now that she thought about it, Jane had seemed more than usually preoccupied for most of the afternoon. She had also noticed that the shadows that had been haunting the young girl’s eyes since Miss Phryne’s accident had seemed to disappear. Jane wasn’t exactly happy again, just not as anxious as Dottie herself and the others still seemed to feel.

After finishing their tea, Dot needed to find some outlet for her overly anxious thoughts, hence the excessive spell of hoovering. Now, having finished that task, she decided to launch into a major spot of baking to help keep her from drowning in the whirlpool that her mind all too easily dragged her into of late. Besides, she reasoned, Jane needed some biscuits for snack time after school, and she knew that Inspector Robinson was especially partial to them. She hoped that Hugh had been able to reach the inspector about the good news of Miss Phryne’s movements and that she had called out for him. Perhaps that would finally rouse him enough to leave his house, and go visit Miss Phryne. Then, perhaps, she and Mr Butler could sneak in and quickly take care of his house, which, no doubt, must be in desperate need of hoovering!

Dust aside, both she, Hugh, and the others (even the cabbies, even if they wouldn’t openly admit to it) had become seriously concerned about Inspector Robinson being in a very bad way since that dreaded day over a month ago. Although, Miss Phryne never openly spoke of it, even Dot’s inexperience when it came to matters of the heart could decipher the lingering looks and sense the simmering energy in the air whenever the two detectives just had to mention the other, let alone be in the same room together.

No, she may not understand all there was to know about relationships, even if she was all too happy to have some firsthand experience of it now with her Hugh. But, she _was_ extremely experienced in baking, and she knew that when certain ingredients were combined just so, and then exposed to heat at a certain temperature and for so long, then beautiful and delicious things could and did occur. And, in her own way, that was how Dot felt whenever she was in the same proximity as her Miss and the Inspector, watching them create a delicate mixture of _something_ without them even realising it, most likely.

Thus, Dot had been baking and cooking up a storm in the past six week, either alone or with Mr B to help cope with their anxiety and grief over Miss Phryne’s accident. And, they also knew that she would have wanted them to continue making sure to send filled basketfuls over to the inspector’s house via Hugh or Bert and Cec. For the most part, Dorothy had been heartened to see that more often than not, the food had at least been tasted, if not outright devoured whenever she inspected the baskets that had been returned just as faithfully by the inspector’s extremely concerned constable. At the very least, Dot knew they had to do what they could to prevent Inspector Robinson from ending up in a hospital bed himself. And so, together, they had tried to do what they could to ensure that didn’t happen.

After putting away the hoover and getting rid of the vases with dying blooms, Dot had returned to the kitchen to start her biscuits only to find the cabbies still there. Mr Butler was just putting away the last of newly washed dishes, and Jane had returned with some homework in front of her. But, the majority of all their attention was directed towards Bert who had a begun a drawing of some sort on some borrowed notebook paper of Jane’s. In fact, he was still gesticulating wildly and waving Jane’s pencil in the air when Dot stepped through the kitchen doorway and was making her way towards the pantry to check their flour supply when she stopped suddenly at the cabbie’s declaration:

“And that is how we’re going to stop the buggers from whisking Miss Fisher away to St Ben’s!”

“Too right, mate,” Cec thumped his friend heartily on the shoulder whilst Jane nodded emphatically, and Mr Butler paused to put down the tea cup he had been drying to stroke his chin thoughtfully.

“I beg your pardon, Bert,” Dot whirled around to face everyone. “But, did you just say what I thought I heard you say?” She raised her hands to her hips and arched an eyebrow at him pointedly.

“Er, righto, sorry, Dottie,” the cabbie mumbled around the unlit cigarette in his mouth. “Do pardon my language there.”

“No, I wasn’t talking about that, although yes, I’d prefer if you did remember to keep your foul mouth clean under this roof, if you please. Especially in Jane’s presence! But, what I meant was, did you just say you were planning to stop them from taking away Miss Phryne?”

At everyone’s nods, Dot couldn’t help clarifying, “But, how? And when? Won’t that be too risky for her?”

“Oh, Dot,” Jane burst out suddenly. “It’s the only way! I just know Miss Phryne wouldn’t want them to ship her off somewhere like that where she’d be so far away from everyone and everything she loves so dearly. It’s been hard enough having her stuck at Dr MacMillan's hospital all these weeks!”

“Dear Jane,” Dot immediately rushed over to the young girl’s side and sat down in the empty seat next to her to take her hand. “Of course she wouldn’t. But, as much as we all dislike having her there, we can’t risk doing anything that could...could...jeopardise her condition even more!”

“But, I just know she wouldn’t want for Aunt Prudence to have her moved! There must be something we can do.”

“Hmmm…” Dorothy closed her eyes to think. “All right, I promise to telephone Dr MacMillan, this very evening, and try to talk to her about this without revealing our discussion, or this madcap plan. As much as I want her home with us again, we must make sure it’s safe enough for Miss Phryne to be moved home first.”

“Excellent idea, Dorothy,” Mr Butler agreed as Bert and Cec grudgingly nodded.

“All right, Dottie, we’ll wait till you’ve gotten more information on how to do this proper like. But, you can’t tell her what we’re planning. Not one word!” Bert growled.

“I’ll be sure to ask about what should be done in the event Miss Phryne does wake up soon and asks to be moved back home here. I’m sure she’d explain how this should be done, like this and that, in order for it to be safe,” Dot conceded.

Jane leaned over to wrap her arms around the older woman’s middle and the two of them clung to one another. “Oh, thank you, Dot!”

“Fantastic, Dottie,” Cec lifted his drink in a hearty salute. “So, d’ya wanna hear the rest of our ideas then?”

“Go on then,” Dot encouraged them, even as she still felt completely terrified at the thought of trying something like this.

Especially if it could cause irreparable harm to Miss Phryne...or worst! But, she was also certain that she, Dot, would fall apart should anything happen to her dear miss.

After all, if it hadn’t been for the lady detective’s notice of the timid maid that day at the Andrews’ estate followed by her subsequent offer of assistance during what Dot considered to be one of her cruelest and darkest moments in life (being let go and then questioned at the police station for something she most definitely did not do!), then Dot surely dreaded to think what might have become of herself otherwise since then. Indeed, coming to work for Miss Fisher, and learning everything that this remarkable lady had been teaching her about the world had helped Dorothy learn how to become braver. And now was not the time to be timid, but to be brave for her precious miss!

All eyes in the room had been watching her expectantly, and then all lungs breathed sighs of relief when they recognised the fire that had lit up within Miss Fisher’s right-hand woman.

Together, the Wardlow family would do what they could to bring their beloved mistress and friend back home where she belonged. It was what she would have wanted. It was what she needed to recover, they were sure of it.

It was the least that they could do, protocol be damned, because that was exactly how their dear Miss Fisher would have viewed it. And exactly what she would have done had any of them had the tragic misfortune of ending up in hospital like she had. And, as long as breath still passed through her still body, they would ensure that Miss Phryne Fisher could do it on her terms. Even after six weeks, she still hadn’t given up on life.

 _And neither will we_ , Dot earnestly vowed in prayer, as she quickly crossed herself, before giving her full attention to Bert’s makeshift diagram on the table. She felt braver already as Jane’s hand squeezed her own, and Mr Butler patted her shoulder reassuringly.

The biscuits could wait until tomorrow.


	8. Chapter 8

_ We are the champions, my friends _

_ And we'll keep on fighting 'til the end _

_ We are the champions _

_ We are the champions _

_ No time for losers _

_ 'Cause we are the champions of the world _

 

- Queen, We Are the Champions

 

Ever since she had begun working for Miss Fisher, Dot had had the chance to accomplish a lot of things she would have never dreamed of. She had become happier, and braver, and she had learned a lot about the world and about herself. She still didn’t see eye to eye with Miss Fisher on a lot of things, but she wasn’t the same girl that had first walked into Wardlow all those months ago, either. She had grown. She had changed (for the better, she hoped.) She still had faith, and she loved her God, and she respected and confided in Father Grogan. But she had changed. She was no longer a scared, little girl. She was starting to become a woman, and she had Miss Fisher to thank for that.

 

Miss Fisher. Dot sighed and sent a silent prayer every time she thought of her Miss, which was quite often since she had had that motor car accident. Always driving so fast, so recklessly. Always rushing into things, wanting to taste the delicious flavours of life in everything she did. Always looking for the next adventure. Always resembling a force of nature. It saddened Dot so much, seeing what had become of the beautiful woman after the accident. Her heart broke every time she visited her at the hospital- which was daily- and saw her laying there, her pale face without a drop of makeup on it, her gorgeous eyes closed, her hair black like raven feathers spreaded all over the white pillow, and her Miss submerged in a deep slumber no one could wake her up from. 

 

She was thinking about this when the telephone rang. She was used to it by now, the telephone calls, both making and receiving them. It still wasn’t her favorite thing in the world- it never would- and she still could hear Father Grogan’s disapproval in his tone of voice when they talked about the things she had to do at her job, but she didn’t care as much. There were worse, more evil things than telephones and wired electricity, she had learned since becoming the companion of a private lady detective. People said and did things to each other that were much worse than an inanimate object making a noise. If she had to answer the telephone from time to time in order to do her job- a job that in some manner helped put criminals behind bars and prevent them from hurting others-, then she was sure the Lord wouldn’t mind so much. She always prayed that He in His infinite wisdom forgave her for her offenses, and she did trust in His forgiveness.

 

“Fisher Residence,” Dot said when she picked up the receiver. 

 

“Hello, Dot, darling. This is Mac speaking.”

 

Dr. MacMillan had been calling the house more frequently since Miss Fisher’s accident. Dot’s heart dropped to her stomach every single time, for she always feared the good doctor was calling with bad news about her Miss’ condition. 

 

“I am calling with news on Phryne’s progress, Dot,” the doctor said over the telephone. “In the past couple of hours there have been some signs that could indicate she is getting better. She has called for the Inspector again, and her hand squeezed mine a little when I held it today when I was in her room- this, however, could have been a reflex. She hasn’t opened her eyes, but she had moved her feet a little- again, this could all be due to reflexes.”

 

“But this is good, right?” Dot asked, hopeful.

 

There was a silence on the other side of the line for a second before Dr. MacMillan spoke again:

 

“This could also equally mean that she is getting worse, dear Dot,” she said with a somber voice. “Phryne’s condition is very critical at the moment…” And so the doctor proceeded to talk about and explain a lot of things that Dot didn’t understand. She didn’t want to understand them, either, for how it could help her Miss whether she did or not? The prospect would still be the same independently whether or not Dot understood about lengths of time for comas and vital signs, and what not. It wouldn’t make a difference, at all. Her Miss would still be asleep. Her Miss would still be at the hospital, perhaps for longer than they’d initially thought.

 

The young maid could feel hot tears gathering in the corner of her eyes. 

 

“I am just letting you know what the prospect is so you can share the news with everyone at Wardlow. So you can all be prepared either way.” There was another pause, and then: “I know you are a religious person, dear Dot, and hope that you will find comfort and peace in your beliefs. Please pray that the rest of us do, too.” 

 

When she finished with the telephone, Dot sat down at the table in the dining room and joined her hands in prayer. 

 

“Father God,” she began “you are the Rock of our Salvation, and today we need a Gibraltar to cling to…”

 

She was interrupted when the phone rang once more. 

 

“Good morning, dear girl,” Mrs. Prudence Stanley greeted her on the other side of the line. The older woman sounded a little bit off, and the young maid wondered whether Dr. MacMillan had already gotten a hold of her. She was, after all, Miss Fisher’s next of kin.

 

“Good morning, Mrs. Stanley,” Dot said, holding her breath.

 

“I have some news to tell you, dear.” Dot knew what her Miss’ aunt was about to say beforehand, and she also knew that she would not like it. “Dr. MacMillan has updated me on my niece’s medical condition. Things don’t seem to be improving for her in spite of the recent changes- but natural, unconscious reflexes and calling out a name every now and then are not much of an encouragement, I am sad to say. I have decided to take today’s doctor’s report as the prompter to have her immediately moved to St. Benedict’s. There they will take very good care of her. I’ll make sure that they do. She’ll have the best private care and treatment there. I think it would be best to no longer leave her to the riffraff medical care she’s been getting at the hospital, private wing or not. Given that it seems this condition will be, um,” she hesitated for a moment here, “prolongated, and that she will be not returning home as we expected, I want to place her in much wiser, more prepared hands as soon as possible.”

 

“I see,” Dot said to the older woman (although she didn’t). “I understand, Mrs. Stanley.” (She certainly didn’t agree, either).

 

The only thing Dot understood and knew, she thought as she got off the phone, was that Miss Fisher wouldn’t want to be moved to a facility for people whose families and doctors had given up hope for. Her Miss wouldn’t want to go without a fight, Dot was sure of that. Miss Fisher had always been a fighter, and in this dark, difficult time she would still want to be one. And she would still expect those that loved her to support her and stand by the choices she had made throughout all of her life. Dot knew Mrs. Stanley meant well, but she wasn’t sure the older woman knew her niece and her views on these things very much. Mrs. Stanley was making a decision she would have wanted others to make were she in that bed. But she wasn’t. It was Miss Fisher there, and all choices should be made by keeping in mind what Miss Fisher would have preferred. What she would have chosen for herself.     

 

She went to the kitchen, where Cec and Bert were eating breakfast with Jane before they drove her to her morning classes. Mr. Butler was there, too, polishing the good silverware out of habit, for it hadn’t been used since Miss Fisher’s accident. 

 

Dot stood there under the door frame, silent for a moment. Then, she cleared her throat and said:

 

“Mr. Butler, Cec, Bert, and Jane...” she took a deep breath as all eyes swivlled towards her. “I think it’s time.”  

  
  


*-*-*

 

For the third time that day, Dot found herself speaking over the telephone to someone.

 

“Excuse me for bothering you at your house at such an inconvenient time, Mrs. Stanley, but something has come up here at Wardlow, and I thought best to consult this with you.” Dot made a pause and closed her eyes for a brief moment before she kept on talking. “You see, it’s about Miss Jane.”

 

She was about to tell a lie. She who never told lies because it was a bad thing, because God forbade it, and it made Him sad and angry when His children disobeyed Him. She had rarely lied as a child, or as a young girl, but ever since she had begun working for Miss Fisher, lying had been required on occasion. Some times to save her life, her Miss’, or the lives of others. And now she was about to tell a lie to Mrs. Stanley because it was necessary to the plan they all intended to put into motion. It was vital, she told herself. She had to tell this lie if she wanted their scheme to be successful. And oh, God forbid her, there wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t do to help her Miss right now!

 

“Is something the matter with Jane?” Aunt Prudence asked, rather alarmed.

 

“She is a little bit upset after learning the news about Miss Fisher’s condition, and the decision to have her moved to St. Benedict’s today. She took it very hard. She asked to stay home from school. We wanted to ask for your permission, Mrs. Stanley,” Dot was now speaking very rapidly, afraid that if she made any pauses she’d lose the courage she’d mustered to do this. “And, see if you could call the school to let them now Miss Jane will be staying at home today due to urgent family matters.”

 

“Oh, the poor girl!” Mrs. Stanley said, sympathetically. “Of course she would take this hard. Phryne has been like a second mother to her. Oh, poor Jane!” she lamented again. “To suffer such a terrible loss again, and at such a young age! Of course she can stay home from school!” At this Dot breathed a sigh of relief. 

 

“I wish I could go visit her, and spend the day with her!” Mrs. Stanley said. “But, I am very busy at the moment taking care of things here, with Phryne being moved to St. Benedict’s shortly.”

 

“Don’t worry about Jane, Mrs. Stanley,” Dot was quick to assure her. “We will take good care of her. Nothing that freshly baked scones and a lovely cup of tea can’t help with.” 

 

And, before Mrs. Stanley could ask any more questions or say anything else, Dot said goodbye to her Miss’ aunt and hung up the phone.

 

She went back into the kitchen, where the cabbies, the butler and Miss Fisher’s ward were waiting. 

 

“What did she say?” Jane asked, anxiously. She was practically hanging on the edge of her seat at the table. 

 

“She said you can miss school today. She will telephone the school to let them know you won’t be in attendance. Oh, Miss Jane!” Dot sighed “I can’t believe you talked us all into letting you be an active part of this!”

 

“The girl here can handle her own,” Bert said, patting Jane on the head affectionately. 

 

“I think it will work towards our advantage that Miss Jane here takes part in the execution of the plan,” Mr. Butler said, pouring Dot a cup of tea. Jane smiled adoringly at the older man, whom she loved as she did the rest of the house staff. 

 

“I still can’t believed we agreed to all of this,” Dot said, taking the cup and saucer from Mr. Butler. “I just telephoned Mrs. Prudence Stanley, and told her a lie so she would give Jane permission to miss school!” Dot sounded mortified all of a sudden.

 

Bert tried to calm her.

 

“You did fine, Dottie,” he said to her. “The Miss would appreciate this.”

 

“Lying to her aunt and scheming a plan to rob a body from a hospital?” Cec said “The Miss would love this! It’s her kind of party!”

 

They all laughed at this (even Dot), but then the atmosphere in the kitchen got really quiet and tense as the clock ticked away, taking with it the minutes they still had before they had to set their plan into motion. 

 

“I’d better check the room is ready for when we get her home,” Dot said.

 

“The room is fine, Dottie,” Cec assured her. “Have another cuppa before we leave. Go on,” he insisted.

 

“Give her something stronger with the tea, Mr. B,” Bert suggested. “She’ll need the liquid courage for what she’s gotta do when we get to the hospital.”

 

“You know I don’t drink alcohol, Bert, thank you very much,” Dot said in a rather upset manner. “And you two finish up, then, we don’t have all morning.” She got up the table.  “I want you ready to go when I come back from downstairs. You too, Miss Jane. And you too, Mr. Butler.”

 

The young maid left the kitchen, wishing for the first time that she were as modern as her Miss was, for she could have really appreciated some courage at the moment, liquid or in any other form.

  
  


*-*-*

  
  


What Miss Dorothy Williams was about to do had her very nervous, but the young maid knew there was no other way they could get this done if she didn’t pull off the part of the plan that had been assigned to her. Cec, Bert, Mr. Butler or Jane wouldn’t do for this. It had to be her. She’d probably end up in tears into the confessional, kneeling at the screen and whispering to Father Grogan.  _ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. My last confession was a week ago _ , before she began telling him about what she had done that very same morning. She tried not to wonder what her penance would be. But whatever penance Father Grogan assigned to her, it would be worth keeping Miss Fisher from being moved to St. Benedict’s. 

 

As she entered the hospital doors, Dot tried to remember everything they had talked through when they’d planned the body swap step by step. It wouldn’t be easy, she knew, but she had once had the good fortune to come across a woman that taught her that nothing that mattered was easy. So, with that thought in mind, she walked up to the private hospital wing where they had been caring for Miss Fisher. She allowed herself one last silent prayer before becoming completely focused on her part of the plan.

 

Dot spotted a couple of nurses down the hallway. They were all dressed in white, and they were looking at some charts. Patients’ medical records, probably. At her hiding place behind a tall column, Dot couldn’t be seen by them, but she could see them. When she saw them walking down the hallway, approaching where she was, she knew what she had to do. She had a small vial in the pocket of her brown coat, and it was time to use it now. She quickly opened it and spreaded its contents all over her long skirt. When the nurses were close enough, she came out of hiding, grabbing onto her stomach with one blood soaked hand and pretending to be in pain:

 

“Please, help me! Help me!” she cried. There were actual tears in her eyes, for she was so nervous she couldn’t help but cry. “Help me, help me, please!”

 

The nurses all went to assist her.

 

“What’s wrong, Miss?” one of them asked, while the other two helped Dot sit down.

 

She began painting and scrunching her face in a painful expression. She closed her eyes really tightly. It would be easier if she didn’t have to see the nurses’ faces as she lied to them.

 

“I think I’m having a miscarriage,” she said. “I don’t know how far along I am, but I started bleeding… And oh, it hurts so much!” she cried out again. “Help me, please, help me!”

 

She was doing this. She was actually doing this. She cared so much about Miss Fisher, loved her so much, that she had agreed to fake a miscarriage so the nurses would be distracted for a moment. She had agreed to this, and now she was going it. She was actually pulling it off.

 

Miss Dorothy Williams had never felt so brave in all of her young, Christian life. 

 

“Oh, Miss!” The older nurse turned to the other two. “Quickly, let’s take this girl to the emergency room!”

 

“Don’t leave me alone!” Dot pleaded, grabbing the older woman’s hand in hers, staining it with the chicken blood she had saved in the small vial. “Please don’t leave me alone, Miss. Please com with me,” she asked in whisperers.

 

“Of course, darling girl. Of course. I won’t leave you alone,” she reassured them.

 

The three nurses helped Dot stand, and they carried her toward the stairs, where there was a wheelchair. They wheeled her out of the private wing in a rush, leaving it temporarily empty. 

 

And that was when the cabbies and Jane came into the picture.

 

Miss Fisher’s guard, Cec and Bert had been observing from the opposite end of the hallway, ready to intervene once Dot and the nurses went away. They had planned it all to a tee, and they were confident they would succeed. They had to. For their Miss. She was counting on them, they knew. She wouldn’t have let them down, so they wouldn’t let her down. 

 

The steps they had to follow were rather easy, and it wouldn’t take them more than a few minutes. The hallway was now empty thanks to Dot. They knew there would be a nursing shift change soon, and that was when they would take their chance. They had borrowed what they needed from a cousin of a friend of theirs from the European Club that owed them money: the uniforms and the commandeered ambulance for a day, that was what they had asked in exchange of finishing off the man’s debt. The wig Jane would wear, and that the girl held in her hands, had come from Miss Fisher’s own wardrobe.

 

“Come on, let’s roll!” Cec said to Bert and Jane.

 

And so, they slipped inside Miss Fisher’s hospital room.

 

“If anyone asks, we are wheeling her bed down to the ‘treatment room’, all right?” Bert reminded Cec

 

Before they left the room with the unconscious Miss Fisher, they turned to Jane to make sure she was all right staying there until they returned to the room. 

 

“I’ll be fine,” Jane promised. “But before you take her,” she took out something out of the pocket of her coat “I want to give this to her”

 

It was a beautiful gold bracelet. One of the very few presents Miss Jane Ross had received in her life. It was dear to her, one of her many treasures. She would never part with it, and now she was choosing to do so because she knew Miss Phryne needed it more than she did at the moment.

 

“It was one of the first presents she bought me,” Jane explained to the cabbies. “I’ve worn it to school every day I’ve had an exam, and it’s always given me good luck.”

 

“Wouldn’t the fact that you’re a little bookworm have anything to do with that?” Cec asked her, but Bert poked him in the ribs with his elbow.

 

“I want her to have this,” Jane said. “For good luck.” She put the bracelet on Miss Fisher’s wrist. It felt cold to the touch, but the girl did not want to think about that at the moment. She looked at the cabbies once more, and said: “Please take very good care of Miss Phryne. Please.”

 

“We will, Miss Jane,” Bert reassured her. “And it is a beautiful gesture, the bracelet,” he commented.

 

“Yes, Miss Jane, it is,” Cec agreed. “Now you stay here until we come back, all right?” The girl nodded her head yes. “We will be quick. Come on, Bert,” he said to his friend “let’s go.”

 

And so, they wheeled Miss Fisher’s bed out of the room, leaving a nervous, anxious-looking Jane there alone waiting for them, the cold she had felt on her guardian’s pale skin when she had put the gold bracelet on still tickling on her fingertips.

 

“You’ll be fine, Miss Phryne,” Jane said out loud when the cabbies closed the door behind them. “You have to be all right, Miss Fisher.”

 

She sat on the chair where Dot or Aunt Prudence usually sat when they visited, and she waited. Cec and Bert had promised they wouldn’t take long, and they didn’t, but to Jane those fifteen minutes felt like an eternity. She wondered how Dot was doing, if the nurses had discovered right away that she wasn’t actually having a miscarriage or any sort of hemorrhage (there couldn’t be anyone healthier than their dear Dot), or if she had been able to keep them fooled for a little bit longer. 

Jane jumped up the chair when the two cabbies opened the door to the room. They were back with the bed, and apparently that phase of the plan had been as successful as the first one. 

 

“It’s done,” Bert said. “She’s in the ambulance. Mr. Butler is there, keeping guard over the Miss.” Cec rearranged the bed again so it looked like it had never been moved. “Come on now, Jane,” he said to the girl. “It’s show time.”

 

Jane took out the black wig she had hidden in the small hand bag she was carrying. Dot had found it in Miss Phryne’s wardrobe among her many costumes, and they all thought it would be perfect for her to wear during the time she spent there laying in the hospital bed pretending to be the now ‘technically abducted’ Miss Fisher. They liked to think of it as in terms of a body swap: Jane would stay there, black wig on, while they took Phryne to Wardlow, where she would have wished to be if she could have chosen between that or being moved to St. Benedict’s like Aunt Prudence wanted. 

 

“We have to get going, Jane,” Bert said to the girl, who was now laying down on the hospital bed, the high- thread count, white blankets draped over her body. “We’ll slip back down the back way to the ambulance. We can’t have Mr. Butler waiting there with the Miss much longer.”

 

“Good luck, Jane,” Cec said to her.

 

“Good luck to you, too,” the girl whispered to the two cabbies before adjusting the black wig on once more.

 

And then she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, just like Miss Phryne had been for the past six weeks. 

 

*-*-*

 

“Miss Fisher here would be really proud of your driving skills, Cec,” Bert commented to his friend. “You must have violated about nine or ten traffic laws in less than five blocks, mate, the speed at which you’re going!”

 

“You get behind the wheel if you think you could do it better,” Cec barked back at him without taking his eyes off the road.

 

“Oh, do stop it, you two!” Mr. Butler intervened. He was in the back of the “borrowed” ambulance, holding Miss Fisher’s hand. “Miss Fisher wouldn’t want you two fighting.”

 

“It’s not fighting, Mr. B,” Bert corrected him. “It’s bantering.”

 

“And the Miss would love it,” Cec added. “She’s the queen of bantering and playful bickering herself.”

 

“Yeah, Mr. B,” Bert agreed “You must have known by now. You have to have noticed how she can get going with that inspector of hers.”

 

“What about a song?” Cec suggested. “The Miss is from Collingwood, right? What about ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’?”

 

“Oh, that’s a good tune,” Bert agreed.

 

The two cabbies began singing:

 

_ Good Old Collingwood forever,  _

_ They know how to play the game. _

 

It sounded a little bit off key to Mr. Butler’s tastes, but he couldn’t deny the two men were showing tremendous enthusiasm while doing this task, not to mention bravery.  

 

_ Side by side they stick together,  _

_ To uphold the Magpies name. _

 

“Come on, Mr. B,” Cec said “Sing along, old man!”

 

The butler rolled his eyes, but joined them to finish the song nonetheless:

 

_ See, the barrackers are shouting,  _

_ As all barrackers should. _

 

_ For the Premiership’s a cakewalk  _

_ For the good old Collingwood.   _

 

They sang it a second time, and then a third, and then a fourth. They were singing it to her, to remind her that they were there, that they were doing all of this for her. Brave Dot had faked a miscarriage for her, and Jane had taken her place in the room at the private wing, and the cabbies were driving a stolen ambulance they had borrowed from someone, and Mr. Butler was in on it too, all because of this woman that had made them come together as a family. A mismatched, odd family, yes, but they still were a family.

 

They sang it to their beloved Miss Fisher in an attempt to communicate with her, get through to her even though she was unconscious. They wanted to let her know they wouldn’t give up on her. They were still there, they were still fighting, and so was she. She’d keep on fighting, they knew. She had been born a fighter. She had been born to survive. 

 

And they sang to cheer each other on and to remind themselves of the importance of what they were doing, and to demonstrate that they had faith in this plan and its outcome. No matter the consequences, no matter what happened, all of them believed it was the right thing. It was what she would have wanted. It was what she would have wanted and done for them had the roles been reversed. 

 

They made it back to Wardlow safely, a sigh of relief on the three men’s lips, and the song they had sung to their Miss still echoing inside their heads, and within their hearts. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We thought some of you might find it interesting to know that we discovered the song the Wardlow men sang is the actual one for the Collingwood footie team!
> 
> Here's the description of it on the Collingwood Football Club site:
> 
> "Believe it or not, ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’ has the oldest origins of any of our Australian football club songs. It started life as a marching song called ‘Goodbye Dolly Gray’ in the USA during the Spanish American War (1898), and grew in popularity through the Boer War (1899-1902). It was written by renowned American composer William D Cobb, who listed among his credits songs for an early stage version of Wizard of Oz."
> 
> http://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/the-song/


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have been simply overwhelmed by all of your amazing and supportive feedback for this story that has indeed taken on a life of its own as @Comeaftermejackrobinson mentioned. We thought initially that it would be a brief sketch, and are so pleased that it has grown into 9 chapters already. 
> 
> We hope you enjoy this next installment and continue to let us know what you think! 
> 
> Lots of love from us! *sending lots of Phryne's forehead kisses to you all*

_Ooh I've been wandering round_  
_But I still come back to you_  
_In rain or shine_  
_You've stood by me, girl_  
_I'm happy at home_  
_You're my best friend_  
_Ooh you make me live_

 _Whenever this world is cruel to me_  
_I got you to help me forgive_  
_Ooh you make me live now, honey_ _  
_ Ooh you make me live

-Queen, You’re My Best Friend

 

 

“Phryne,” the familiar voice shone into her heart like the bright rays of sunshine that were due to break out shortly across the skies above sooner than later. “Oh, how I’ve missed you, Phryne!”

Incredulously, Phryne jolted from her reverie whilst lounging on Jack’s garden bench. She had been mulling over the immense expanse of research that Jack had shared with her after they had returned from the hospital the previous evening.

Her heart swelled with emotion and pride as she recalled him taking her hand, and leading her out to his garden shed. There, in and amongst some of his gardening paraphernalia, Jack revealed how he had been plotting several weeks’ worth of research. Mapped onto butcher’s paper that he had surrounded the shed’s walls with, Phryne recognised his method from the one time she had seen him do the same at his office at the station.

Now, however, her resourceful inspector had recorded intricate timelines and details of various comatose cases with matching similarities to her own. Some had big crosses straight through them in which the patient never woke up, she realised, in dismay. Whereas, he had circled others in red. Upon closer examination, she was intrigued to find that these were cases where the patient did recover after varying periods of time ranging from several days to weeks, and even one rare case in England that had stretched over a year. She had squeezed his hand tightly when she realised the hours of energy he must have poured into trying to solve one of the most difficult mysteries he had yet encountered.

They had then both wandered back out into his magnificent garden where she led him back to the bench where she had found him earlier that day.

“This is where I often do my best thinking outside of City South,” he simply explained in answer to her unspoken question after he had sat down, and she had nestled herself onto his lap.

“It’s your refuge,” she had responded in understanding, warmth bursting into her heart at the sight of his sudden, yet endearing lopsided smile that she traced with her forefinger.

“One of them,” he agreed, kissing the digit gently.

“Oh?”

“Considering the circumstances, I’m prepared to overlook your rusty deductive skills, Miss Fisher,” he teased before his features grew serious. “But, I would have thought you’d have immediately recognised by now where, or should I say, with whom my other place of refuge lies.”

His eyes contemplated her in that particularly distinctive gaze that always made her feel rather breathless just before he had leaned over to truly leave her breathless. The thought of his wonderful kiss vanished as she snapped her head towards the familiar voice calling to her again in the present.

But, it couldn’t be!

“ _Janey_? Where are you?”

“I’m so glad you can hear me finally, Phryne,” her sister’s voice replied clearly as a bell tinkling through the predawn mist. “I’ve missed my best friend _so_ much.”

Phryne felt tears prickling her eyes as she stood up and searched the semi-darkness about her frantically.

“I’ve missed you so much too, Janey! Where are you?”

But only silence met her before the sounds of crickets resumed chirping.

“No! Janey, I’m right here! Please, answer me!”

Again, there was no response. Before she could stop herself, the dam broke and Phryne found herself on her knees in the grass weeping just as she had on that day when they had discovered her beloved sister’s remains. And, just like on that terrible day, she reached out blindly through the flood of emotions engulfing her.

To again feel _his_ hand grasping hers, pulling her gently back up and into his arms.

“What are you doing out here, Phryne? You’re cold as ice!” Jack briskly rubbed a hand up and down her arm and back whilst continuing to hold her comfortingly with his other arm. “Who were you talking to?”

“Oh, Jack!” she managed to gasp out between her heavy sobs. “It was Janey! I could hear her calling to me.”

“You could hear your sister?” Jack tried to mask the sudden tremor threatening his own speech at Phryne’s revelation. “What were you doing out here, anyway? I was so worried when I woke up and didn’t know where you had gone! I thought…oh, never mind what I thought.”

He quickly clamped down on the waves of panic he had endured when he woke up to find himself alone in his bed, thinking the worst had happened.

Instead, he quickly rallied himself and focused his attention back on the distressed woman in his arms, whose incoherent weeping was alarming in itself. He could count on one hand the amount of times he had seen her in such a state. And each had of those rare moments had been related somehow to her sister. Grimly, he gently led her back inside the house and straight into his study where he knocked over a few piles of his books in his haste to reach his wing-backed chair.

He quickly sat down, pulling her onto his lap, before reaching over the side where he usually kept the patchwork quilt that his dear nanna had made for him when he was a little boy. Phryne curled herself against him as he tenderly wrapped the soft cover around his partner and simply held her as she poured out all the emotions that had been assailing her since she had discovered herself displaced from her injured body. Jack continued to just hold her silently until she was able to release it all.

Gradually, Phryne became calmer and felt herself grow drowsy. She felt safely cocooned there in the shelter of Jack’s quilt and arms as he continued to hold her tightly, quietly lending her his warmth and strength. Just as he had always done.

“I woke up suddenly,” she began to explain softly as she nuzzled her nose against his now damp pyjama top that he had flung on haphazardly in his haste to find her earlier. “I didn’t want to disturb you so I went out to the garden to think over everything that had happened. And, what you had been researching about it all.”

He understood what she meant, although, he had experienced quite the opposite. After they had returned from the hospital where he had learned and accepted that Miss Fisher was not, in fact, a hallucination at all, he had shown her the fruits and frustrations of all his research. This was then followed by his kiss after their discussion about places of refuge, which they were all too eager to continue exploring in the refuge of his bedroom. Afterwards, he had slipped into the most peaceful night’s sleep for the first time in six weeks with his relaxed limbs entwined together with that of his partner.

Thus, it hadn’t taken him long to awaken abruptly as his body registered the absence of hers against his. He would never forget that moment of instantaneous dread that swamped his senses when his mind immediately jumped to the most logical conclusion for her disappearance. Despite the fact that he had been trying over the past month and half to come to terms with the possible reality that she could very much disappear from his life forever, Jack Robinson knew that he simply wouldn’t be ready to accept that truth in actuality. Not for a very long time. If ever.

“Go on,” he encouraged in a soothing tone that didn’t belie his inner turmoil.

“That was when I heard her clearly call out my name. She said that she missed me. I kept asking her where she was, but she wouldn’t tell me…” her voice wobbled slightly, prompting him to tighten his arms around her as he brushed his lips against her hair that was tickling his nose.

“After she didn’t reply, it felt like losing her all over again, Jack!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?”

“No, I was still awake,” she stated emphatically. “I’ve never heard her voice so clearly like that before. Oh, Jack, what do you think that means?” She suddenly leaned back slightly to look up at him in trepidation.

“I’m not sure, Phryne,” he told her honestly. “I haven’t come across anything like that in my reading and research yet. I’m not sure if anyone has documented anything like that yet. But, first thing today, let’s head to the university’s library to see if we can find out.”

“I wish there was a way we could convince Mac about what is happening. It would be so ideal to have her medical insights.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, the good doctor has been keeping me informed of your progress,” Jack reassured her. “And lending me any number of books and texts, and every scientific paper or journal that she’s been able to track down on the subject. I’ll have to ask her if she’s come across anything like this.”

Phryne smiled slightly then. “Hmm, too bad Mrs Bolkonsky turned out to be a cold-blooded murderess, or we might have been able to enquire what she thought about all this.”

Reassured by the sight of his partner’s customary expression and tone, the inspector lifted a hand to caress and tilt her chin tenderly towards him.

“I don’t need a so-called psychic medium to inform me that what I’m experiencing now is more real, or precious, or _extraordinary_ than anything else I’ve yet encountered.”

“Is that so, Inspector? And just what experience are you referring to?”

“Like all things to do with the supernatural,” he informed her. “I’ve been informed that it’s best to come into contact with its unpredictable powers directly. Like so.” He leaned down slowly to demonstrate.

The sudden tingling sensations flooding Phryne’s body began to amplify, as she closed her eyes in anticipation. Only to have them fly open at the shrill ringing of Jack’s telephone as it clamoured for attention from the corner of his mahogany desk.

With a loud groan, Jack quickly glanced at the clock on his wall, and reluctantly rose to his feet with Phryne still in his arms. Giving her a quick kiss on the lips, he gently deposited her into his chair before stepping over to his desk to snatch up the receiver.

“Jack Robinson here!” He growled before his face and tone registered with unusual alarm. “Collins! What is it, Constable?”

Phryne slowly stood up, and the quilt dropped to the floor as the tingling sensation intensified to match Jack’s look of consternation.

“What? The hospital just telephoned?” The furrow in the inspector’s forehead deepened. “A patient has just been abducted?”

Phryne’s eyes grew wider as she quickly pieced together what was happening from Jack’s side of the conversation.

“I’ll be right over!” He hung up the telephone in disbelief, only for it to begin immediately shrilling again. Jack shot Phryne a look of mixed desperation, confusion, and anxiety before snatching up the receiver again.

“Inspector Robinson here. Yes, thank you, Doctor MacMillan. Correct, Collins just reached me with the news,” he paused to listen intently. “I understand, Doctor. I shall leave immediately.”

Jack once again replaced the receiver before walking over to run his hands up and down Phryne’s arms when he noticed her trembling visibly.

“Something’s h-happening to me, Jack,” she stammered. “W-what’s happening?”

“I think I have an inkling, Phryne,” he replied. “That was just Constable Collins and Doctor MacMillan calling to inform me…that your body has been taken and swapped at the hospital.”

“ _What_? What do you mean swapped? By whom?”

“I have a very strong inkling about that. Apparently, your Aunt Prudence had just decided this morning to have you moved to the private hospital that she’s selected for your ongoing care. But, when it came time for the personnel to transport you…” he paused to hold her hands tightly. “They discovered Jane in the hospital bed instead of you.”

“ _Jane?!”_ He quickly guided her back down into his chair, and once again wrapped the quilt around her shuddering frame.

“When Doctor MacMillan showed up to investigate, Jane admitted everything. So, the doctor telephoned me straight away since your aunt is threatening the hospital for lapse in security and all manner of accusations.”

“Oh, god! Where is Jane now?” Phryne demanded. “Who did this? And where did they take my body?”

“Mac is taking her back to Wardlow now as we speak. Evidently, that’s where your body is now too. Phryne, it looks like your merry little band of followers took it upon themselves to take you home. Which is where we’re headed right now. Soon as we get dressed, of course.”

Despite the urgency of the situation, Miss Fisher and her inspector finished the rest of their conversation with their eyes as they both rushed for the bedroom.

The first rays of sunlight began filtering in through the slightly opened curtains in Jack’s study. They billowed their farewell as the two detectives rushed down the hallway, and then dashed through the front door.

It was time for Phryne Fisher to return home.


	10. Chapter 10

_Funny how love is everywhere just look and see_

_Funny how love is anywhere you're bound to be_

_Funny how love is every song in every key_

_Funny how love is coming home in time for tea_

 

\- Queen, _Funny How Love Is_

  


Constable Hugh Collins had found himself making a difficult call to a certain detective inspector for the second time in the last six weeks. The first one had taken place the day the Honourable Phryne Fisher had had the motor car accident that put her in a coma. The second one he had made just that morning, when he’d been given the task to inform his boss that the aforementioned socialite had been moved from the hospital without her next of kin’s consent and was now back at her home in St. Kilda.

 

Apparently, the plans Mrs. Prudence Stanley had for her niece weren’t of Miss Fisher’s assembled family’s liking. They thought she wouldn’t want to be moved to St. Benedict’s, and they had done all in their power to stop that.

 

Well, they had succeeded, at least for the time being. Mrs. Stanley was determined to see that her will be respected and her niece moved to St. Benedict’s before the day was through, so she had made herself present in Wardlow with staff from the hospital, and was now having a very heated discussion with the cabbies (Hugh would never admit this to the inspector, but he liked the cabbies. They were good with his Dottie, took care of her- he’d always like anyone that took care of his beloved.) Dr. MacMillan was trying to calm the stormy waters between Miss Fisher’s staff and her aunt, but to no avail: the older woman was as stubborn as her niece, whether she wanted to admit to this similarity or not.

 

Inspector Robinson had arrived at Wardlow shortly after Hugh had telephoned him. He looked very serious when he had arrived, but somehow better rested than the constable had seen him in over a month. Hugh knew how difficult it must all be for the inspector. The young constable could be a little bit naive sometimes, and he didn’t have much experience himself apart from his incipient relationship with his darling Dottie. But he was an official of the law, albeit a novice one, and he was training very hard to become as good as the inspector. He paid attention to things, and people, and he _observed_ them rather than just seeing them. What his superior felt for Miss Fisher had little to do with friendship as of late, and a lot to do with the same warm, intense sensation Hugh got every time he saw Dorothy. It could be easily read in the inspector’s face every time Miss Fisher walked into a room: everything about his semblance changed, his body language spoke volumes, and he seemed more alive than Constable Collins had ever seen him in the short time he’d been working under his wing.

 

If Hugh were a betting man (and it wasn't from want of trying on the part of the aforementioned cabbies), then the constable would put everything on his suspicion that Inspector Robinson was in love with Miss Fisher.. It was most likely an understatement that the last few weeks had been as close to hell for Jack Robinson as he’d ever get, perhaps even more hellish than the war had been. Hugh was pretty certain that his mentor loved the lady detective, adored her even(or at least as much as he himself adored his Dottie). Unconditionally. In spite of everything and against all odds. Hugh had seen the inspector try to fight this, but it was becoming more obvious that he hadn’t been able to. That powerful love had ridden all over him, just like Miss Fisher always rode all over everything she found in her way. The inspector hadn’t gotten away from it, and if anything, he had fallen deeper than anyone who knew him would have thought possible. Miss Fisher had made him come undone, Hugh could tell that. She had defied everything he knew about life, and love, and the whole world. Just like Dottie had done with Hugh.

 

And now that Miss Fisher was so seriously injured, now that everything was so uncertain, the man she had made come undone was truly at his wit’s end. The fact he had taken such a long leave of absence was testimony alone to this, if nothing else. In fact, Hugh couldn’t recall the last time Inspector Robinson had been absent from his post!

 

They didn’t know if Miss Fisher would wake up. They didn’t know how long she’d stay like _that._ Comatose. Detached. Completely disconnected from their world. There had been talks to have her moved to St. Benedict’s, Dottie had told him, distressed and holding back tears, and now the decision Mrs. Stanley had been pondering had become a reality. It was bound to happen. They were taking her there, even if it was something Miss Fisher would have never chosen for herself. Dot and the others at Wardlow had tried to prevent it, but judging by what Mrs. Stanley was saying at the top of her lungs, it was going to happen. The older woman didn’t care what her niece would have chosen had she had the chance: she was battling everyone- Dr. MacMillan, the help, the inspector, _everyone_ \- especially because she knew she had the right to decide over the lady detective’s treatment.

 

Hugh slowly shook his head from side to side as he watched the scene those people were making. All of them had something in common: they cared about Miss Fisher very much. They were her family. It was true that Mrs. Stanley was related by blood, but in the young constable’s opinion that didn’t mean much. Miss Fisher loved everyone at Wardlow deeply, and _she_ considered them their family. That wasn’t enough for Mrs. Stanley, of course, and Hugh was sure the woman would have not appreciated him giving his opinion on this. It made him sad that they were all fighting when they should have been trying to compromise on what would be best for Miss Fisher, and he thought it was unfair that a single person held all the power to decide over her treatment and wellbeing simply because there were blood ties. Weren’t emotional ties as important? Well, apparently they weren’t when it came to this, and Constable Collins knew this for a fact in light of what Mrs. Stanley’s was currently screaming at the cabbies and Dr. MacMillan:

 

“ _I_ am Phryne’s family! You may be her friends and staff - and only God knows what goes on in my niece’s head to have you all think you can take such liberties - but I am her next of kin and all power of decision is mine! Emotional ties mean nothing in the eyes of the law, blood ties are what counts!”

 

Hugh didn’t quite get what Dr. MacMillan and the cabbies were saying to Mrs. Stanley, for they had begun speaking loudly at the same time. And, because the young constable’s attention was caught by something that he had just observed from the corner of his eye: Inspector Robinson and Miss Jane were discreetly hurrying up the stairs to the second floor of the house.

 

Hugh sighed. This didn’t surprise him at all. After all, it was where Miss Fisher was at the moment, at least until St. Benedict’s staff members had her moved from there. It was natural for the inspector to want to see her one last time before she was admitted to this new facility. And Miss Jane, the poor girl. It couldn’t have been easy, living in the streets, stealing for that awful man that mistreated the girls and beat them if they didn’t turn in with enough pennies. Now that she had found a good home, a family, someone to look up to… The poor girl was surely feeling terribly. Losing Miss Fisher was probably harder on her than it was on everyone else. He couldn’t help the compassion he felt for the adolescent girl: his own Dottie had found a new family, a new beginning, thanks to Miss Fisher, weeks before they found Jane in that train. This had to be devastating for both Miss Jane and his Dottie.

 

He was distracted from his line of thought by another one of Mrs. Stanley’s shrieks:

 

“I don’t care how blooming well you claim to know my niece’s preferences! I am the only one with a voice right now! Oh, Dr. MacMillan, I would have never thought you’d approve of something like this!”

 

 _Oh, poor Miss Fisher_ , Hugh thought. _Poor Miss Fisher_.  

  


*-*-*

  


“Have you tried laying on the bed on top of your body, Miss Phryne?” Jane asked her anxiously and nervously. The three of them- Jane, Phryne and Jack- were in the room upstairs trying to reunite Miss Fisher’s corporeal body with her spirit. But, nothing they had suggested was working.

 

“We tried that at the hospital the other day,” Jack informed Jane. “We tried several different methods, everything that came to mind actually, but nothing happened.”

 

“There must be something we’re not thinking of, something that we’re missing!” Phryne exclaimed, frustrated. She sat at the end of the bed where _the other Phryne_ \- the one everyone else could see and touch- was resting, eyes closed and skin pale and cold. The Phryne that could actually move, and speak, and cry (there were tears of frustration and desperation forming in her eyes, that both her ward and the inspector could clearly see glistening there) hid her face in her hands and groaned in irritation. “There must be something we’re not taking into account, something that we’re ignoring that is vital for this to work!”

 

“Oh, Miss Phryne, I am so sorry this is happening,” Jane said, tears streaming down her face as well.

 

“Oh, don’t cry, darling girl!” She gathered Jane in her arms and held her close. The girl could still feel Miss Phryne’s heartbeat in her chest and the warmth of her skin, and that was reassuring. It meant it wasn’t all lost. They still had a chance, didn’t they? They had to keep trying. There had to be something they could do, something that like Miss Phryne had suggested they still hadn’t thought of. Something that would work.

 

“We’ll figure this out,” Jack tried to reassure both Miss Fisher and Miss Jane, but the truth was he could feel his heart throbbing painfully in his throat. He was as nervous, anxious and frustrated as the lady detective and the young girl were, but he was determined not to let it show. He wanted to be the calm presence Miss Fisher needed at such a difficult moment. Her “noble knight in woolen armour,” she might have teased him if she could have read his mind at the moment he thought sardonically. The relieved and obviously adoring look she sent him at his comment, however, made him wonder again if she could.

 

And then there was Miss Jane, too. Oh, how relieved Miss Fisher’s ward had been when the inspector had approached her as soon as he could after he and Miss Phryne had arrived at Wardlow half an hour ago. In the midst of the dramatic showdown that Aunt Prudence was enacting, he had managed to secretly inform her that he could see Miss Fisher, too, that the Jane wasn’t the only one who could.

 

Miss Fisher had told him about how worried Jane had been at the hospital when they had had their first encounter after the accident, the day the lady detective had realized she was having an outer body experience. Jane had been scared she had inherited her birth mother’s poor mental health, and that perhaps seeing Miss Fisher was a symptom of a condition similar to the one that afflicted Miss Ross. She had been so afraid of telling anyone she could see Miss Fisher’s spirit, terrified of where that confession could lead: what would they think of her? How would they react? Would they look at her like people had so often looked at her mother?

 

Thus, she had guiltily felt so reassured when Inspector Robinson had told her he could also see, feel, and hear Miss Fisher as if she was actually there. His senses were as responsive to her warmth, and her voice, and the touch of her skin as Jane’s were.

 

“So you can see her too, Inspector?” Jane had asked, looking from Jack to Phryne- the Phryne only they could see- with her eyes as big as saucers. “I’m not the only one, then?” She had almost breathed a sigh of relief at this.

 

“No, my dear Jane, you aren’t,” Miss Fisher had told her. “Jack can see me, too. He could from the beginning, we just didn’t realize that. He had thought that I was a very vivid dream, but then I convinced him that I was real.” She hadn’t given any more details to Jane, she had just left it at that. The girl had been too happy to know she wasn’t the only one seeing Miss Fisher, and extremely worried about what was going to happen now that Mrs. Stanley knew what they had done and where they had taken her. So, Jane hadn’t added anything else on the subject.

 

“Aunt Prudence is so cross with us for what we did,” Jane commented, the shrieks from Mrs. Stanley filtering through the first floor roof and reaching their ears on the second level of the house. The little girl smiled at Miss Fisher, not an ounce of concern that her adoptive aunt was still upset over what had happened. “I would do it all again in a heartbeat, Miss Phryne,” she told her. “And I know the rest feels the same.”

 

Miss Fisher held the girl close again and kissed her on the forehead, her lips curving into a proud smile. She buried her nose in Jane’s long, blonde hair, and breathed her in. The feeling of the girl’s arms wrapping around her waist gave Phryne comfort. It reminded her of home, and family, and everything she wanted to keep. Everything she didn’t want to lose: her Wardlow family, her life in Melbourne, her career as a lady detective, her relationship with the inspector…

 

With these realizations, she held Jane even more tightly and breathed her in once more. It was so calming, the girl’s innocence. The love she could feel. The warmth. The loyalty. And then she realized she was holding onto the girl for dear life before she represented something even bigger for her, she always had, ever since that day they had met on the train to Ballarat. She was holding onto Jane because of what she had meant to her from the very beginning: a second chance. Jane had been her second chance to get things right.

 

She had failed her sister. Phryne didn’t care what everyone else thought or told her: she had failed her. She should have paid more attention, she should have never taken her eyes off of Janey. She had let Murdoch Foyle take Janey away from her. He had torn her little sister apart from her family, robbed her of the beautiful future she could have had. He had taken away the one person Phryne had loved the most, the one she had cared for the most. Hadn’t she cared enough? It was obvious that she hadn’t, otherwise her sister would still be there, and she would never have known the hell of losing her.

 

Oh, it was something Phryne would never forgive herself for. The guilt and the remorse would be with her until she breathed her very last, she knew that. The day her sister had disappeared was never far from her mind, and neither were the self-blame, the stigma of her failure. She was supposed to have protected her. She had promised Janey she’d always protect her, and that she would always be able to count on her big sister. But, her big sister had failed her. She had failed Janey, she had failed herself. She had been living with this guilt for over twenty years now, and only recently the weight she carried on her shoulders constantly had begun to lessen.

 

The certainty that Foyle would never see the light of day again was one of the reasons why she had gotten better at battling the shadows and demons. Giving her sister the burial she deserved and knowing what had had happened to her, those were other reasons. And then of course there was Jack. He had helped her so much, he had been there every time she had needed him, reminding her she shouldn’t be afraid of shadows.

 

And there was Jane. Her lovely Jane. The second chance life had given her. She hadn’t been able to save Janey, but she had saved Jane. She had given her a home, a family, a future. A second chance. Yes, it had been a second chance for both of them. A beautiful gift from a higher being. Phryne wasn’t sure she believed in a God in the same way other people, like Dot, did. But she liked to think there was a powerful higher being- Mother Nature perhaps? Or something like that. The moon, the stars, the sun, something bigger than all of them that were like little ants walking on the face of the earth. She liked to think it was something connected to the universe, and that it was that something that had sent Jane her way. She liked the idea that the universe had made them found each other when they had been both in a hopeless, emotional place.

 

“I need something like that now,” Phryne thought out loud, tears streaming down her face and dampening Jane’s soft hair- her words were muffled by it, barely audible for the girl and Jack. “I need another gift from the universe right now. Another chance. A second chance. Once more…”

 

A second chance to live. To habitate the body that laid there in the bed, motionless and cold and so distant from everything she’d always been. A second chance to enjoy her little assembled family: Dot, and Cec and Bert, and Mr. Butler, and her best friend Mac. A second chance to be the strong, independent, open minded role model Jane needed.

 

A second chance to tell Jack that she loved him and that she wanted to be with him. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything else. A life shared with him, their strength combined, a relationship in which they were equals. Oh, the inspector could be modern and liberal enough for it to work- he already was modern and liberal even though he couldn’t see it that way. A marriage of true minds, Shakespeare would have called it. And even if she didn’t find the word “marriage” to her tastes, Phryne would have agreed with the English writer on the essentials of his concept. She wanted a second chance to have all of that with Jack.

 

“Please, let me have a second chance,” she pleaded. “Please.”

 

There was nothing she wished so much, and with so much of her heart.

 

And then it happened.

 

It was just a second, but then it wouldn’t have taken more than just a second, right? She had seen it happen. She had seen it at war. It didn’t take more than just a second. She had seen it happen to others, and now she was watching as it happened to herself, a privileged viewer of her own death.

  
The body on the bed had stopped breathing.    


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In efforts to soothe all of your fears, we have been writing like mad to bring you this next chapter! The final one is also nearly completed so you can start collectively breathing again too when Phryne does! Because, of course, she does (well, maybe not when she'll be too busy snogging a certain someone...but more of that to come...we promise)!
> 
> Meanwhile, maybe stock up on some more tissue boxes...just in case!

_Funny how love is running wild and feeling free_ _  
_ _Funny how live is coming home in time for tea_ _  
_ _Funny, funny, funny_ _  
_ _From the earth below to the heavens above_ _  
_ _That's how far and funny is love_   
At any time, anywhere

 

\- Queen, _Funny How Love Is_

  


 

Everything slowed down.  It felt extremely bizarre at first: she was there, but at the same time she wasn’t there. The first thing she noticed was that Jack and Jane stopped seeing her the moment her mortal body went into what she supposed was cardiac arrest. They both became frantic, eyes big with horror. Jane began crying, screaming, as Jack tried to calm her. Her Jack, her poor Jack. He looked devastated, the pain and desperation so terrible, so deep she could almost feel it. Taste it. Touch it. She tried to reach out to them, talk to them, place her hands on their shoulders, but she couldn’t. It was odd, yes. She was there, but she wasn’t there.

 

Where was she, really?

 

A lot of things happened all at once: Jane fell to the floor, on her knees by the side of the bed, and she pleaded with Miss Fisher to stay with them as she held her hand in both her small ones. Jack opened the door of her boudoir and shouted for help, calling urgently for Mac. His voice sounded so throaty, so hoarse. It hurt Phryne to hear him like that, wounded and mad with grief…

 

It was like a nightmare. But it was worst, because she knew this was real. But was it one from which she could wake up? Was this really the end of the journey for the Honourable Miss Fisher, the woman that had always been daring and reckless and adventurous, solving crimes and flying planes and driving too fast? But it wasn’t a nightmare because she was most likely dying- no, death was, in any case, something new to discover, something different, a new taste. She had never been afraid of dying, no. She was sad she was leaving them, sad she wouldn’t have the second chance she had been desperately hoping for, pleading for the moment before _it_ happened.

 

Yes, it was like a nightmare, seeing Jane and Jack coming undone as she breathed her last. She knew firsthand what it was like to lose a loved one, someone so important and so precious your heart breaks into a million pieces the moment you realize that they are gone and they won’t be coming back. She had experienced that with her sister, and she didn’t wish that pain on  anyone, for it was unbearable like no other. No one deserved to feel that.

 

“Jack! Jane…” she tried to call their names, but she found out that she couldn’t.

 

And then, before she knew it, she realized she wasn’t at her St. Kilda home anymore. And Jack and Jane weren’t there. Or anyone she knew, for that matter. She was completely alone… wherever she had ended up.

 

Phryne looked around, trying to gather information on her whereabouts. It was an open space, a field. It was empty, and quiet, and the wind was blowing. Other than a few birds singing on a tree some couple of feet away, everything was in silence. Was she already dead? Was this some sort of heaven? It felt peaceful. _She_ felt peaceful, lighter and calmer than she had in all of her vertiginous whirpool of a life. It was a first, definitely, to not have the rush of energy running wild in her veins, flooding her with the primitive need to keep on moving, on running, free and savage. It certainly was different, but it didn’t bother her.

 

She decided two things, then. The first one was that she had most likely passed away and this was some sort of afterlife (oh, poor Dot was going to be so disappointed one day when she got there and saw there were no trumpets, and no saint, and no cherubs). And the second one was that, to her own surprise, she rather liked it. It was simple and austere, and she had been eccentric and bohemian in life, but had it been hell and this was some sort of eternal punishment then she wouldn’t have been feeling so peaceful, so content, so full of love. This had to be someplace good, with the warm sun shining down on her face and the blue skies looking like they had been freshly painted just for her. Eternity wandering through this field would definitely be boring, but perhaps if she wandered a little she’d find someone, something else.

 

So Phryne began to wander awhile.

 

“Hello…” she called out. “Anyone else here? I have just died, don’t you throw welcome parties for the newly arrived?”

 

She heard a giggle behind her back. A childish giggle she would have recognized anywhere, dead or alive. She closed her eyes and felt a single tear trailed down her face, and then she opened and turned around to face the person she had been unconsciously thinking of ever since she had found herself there.

 

Phryne knew where she was now, the open field was no longer a simple open field.

 

That was the place she had last seen Janey all those years ago, before Foyle kidnapped and killed her. And Janey was there, the little girl she had been at the moment of her death, beautiful and innocent with her long blonde hair in two braids. Just like Phryne had fixed it that morning before they had left their home in Collingwood to go see the circus.

 

The little girl’s face was clean, no traces of dust or mud. And she still had both of her blue hair ribbons. Her clothes weren’t filthy, second-hand and torn. She was wearing a beautiful, simple white dress with a pink pinafore. She had always wanted a pink pinafore, and Phryne had promised her that as soon as she was of age and could get a job, she would buy her one with her first pay.  (The first time she had come into some money of her own she had bought a pink pinafore. She kept it, perfectly folded and immaculate, under her bed in the box it had came in.)

 

“Janey!” Phryne cried out, falling on her knees so she was eye to eye with the little girl. “My beautiful Janey!” She cupped the smiling girl’s face in her hands. “Look at you! I had almost forgotten how precious you were, my Janey!” Phryne couldn’t stop the tears streaming down her face. She didn’t care at all about them, and she realized now that these were happy tears because she was with the person she had always missed and needed the most: her sister, her Janey.

 

“Oh, Phryne, look how beautiful you are!” the little girl giggled. “You look like a princess!” She giggled again. “A pirate princess!” She threw her arms around Phryne’s neck, and she held her tightly, nestled against her chest. “I’ve missed you so much, Phryne. I’ve missed you every day!” Janey said into her ear, as if she were telling her a little secret no one else but them was supposed to know. “I miss playing pirates with you!”

 

Phryne wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of one hand while she caressed Janey’s face with the other.

 

“We’ll play pirates forever now, Janey!” she promised her.

 

She was surprised to see the girl’s smiling expression change into a frown.

 

“What do you mean? Are you staying?” Janey asked her, somewhat puzzled. “Are you staying _forever_ here with me?”

 

“Of course I am, Janey!” Phryne told her. “There’s no other place I’d rather be forever than with you! I want to spend forever with you!”

 

“But what about the others?” the little girl asked with that frown of hers Phryne had always found so funny looking. Oh, how she had loved teasing her sister about it!

 

Phryne didn’t understand at first, so she asked:

 

“What others?” Phryne looked around. She had been sure they were alone, weren’t they?

 

“Your Wardlow family!” Janey exclaimed. “Mac, and Dot, and Cec and Bert, and Mr. B, and _Jane and Jack_!”

 

“You know about them?” Phryne inquired, surprised.

 

“Of course I do, you silly thing!” Janey laughed. “Who do you think keeps sending them?”

 

Phryne’s breath caught.

 

“You- _you_ sent them to me?”

 

“Yes!” The little girl looked very proud of herself, and very happy, if the big smile on her face was anything to go by. “I sent Mac first when you went to the big war with the mean people in Europe, so she would be your friend and protect you. And then when you came back home,” she was, of course, referring to Melbourne, “I sent you Dottie, and Hugh, and Jack,” she giggled again, more than ever, when she mentioned the inspector. “And then I sent you Jane! Isn’t it funny that she is named like me, but she is a lot like you?” she laughed- she definitely found that very amusing.

 

“Oh, look,” she pointed at something by Phryne’s wrist. “You have the bracelet she gave you!”

 

Phryne looked down and noticed through her watery eyes that she was wearing, in fact, a bracelet that was Jane’s. She had bought it for the girl, one of the very first presents she’d given her ward. She had no clue why she had it, but seeing it there on her wrist made her feel a major pang of homesickness. And it hurt. It hurt a lot.

 _No, no, no, no,_ she thought. _You’re here with Janey, everything is alright now. You are here with Janey, nothing can hurt anymore._

 

“She gave it to you when she took your place at the hospital,” Janey said smartly. “It’s for good luck!”  

 

Phryne smiled down at it. She was happy she got to keep it in the afterlife, something from Jane. She wished she had been able to keep something from Jack was well, perhaps the scarf he had given her not so long before the accident that had ended up costing her her life.

 

“Don’t be sad, Phryne!” Janey told her in a cheery voice.

 

“No, no, I’m not sad,” she wiped the tears from her face once more, this time with the sleeve of her the outfit that she might now have to wear for all of eternity. “I am so, so happy to see you, Janey. You’ve no idea just how much I’ve needed you, how much I’ve missed you. And how very, deeply sorry I am for what happened…”

 

“Phryne, it wasn’t your fault.”

 

“Yes, it was! I was supposed to take care of you, I was supposed to…” she began, but Janey cut her off.

 

“You were a little girl just like me, Phryne. You were a child. Mum and dad were supposed to take care of us. Both of us.”

 

“You were my responsibility…” Phryne cried.

 

“No, I wasn’t. We were children, Phryne. I still am a child, I’ll always be. I like that very much,” she said, dreamily. “Adults can be complicated, I think. Like you and the inspector. You two are very complicated.”

 

Phryne laughed.

 

“So you like the inspector?” she asked Janey.

 

“Yes! He played pirates when he was a little boy, too. And, he rode a bike! And now that he is an adult he is a good person, and he is good with you. He helped you when… when you found me.”  

 

“Janey, I am so sorry…” She couldn’t say the words enough, Phryne thought. She’d have to say it a million times, and maybe even then it wouldn’t be enough for her. Maybe a thousand times a million times wouldn’t be enough. She didn’t care if Janey thought it hadn’t been her fault: Phryne needed to apologize for what had happened. It was a need that she felt stronger than any other thing she could feel there.

 

“Phryne, you have nothing to be sorry for! You found me! You put that evil man away for good, and he can’t hurt anyone else ever again! Please don’t think is your fault, Phryne. Nothing was. Nothing is.”

 

They hugged once more. It felt like home away from home, holding Janey’s light, small body. She smelled like sunflowers and vanilla, and she was so warm and sweet, just like Phryne had always remembered her. She had never loved someone as much as she had loved Janey, not until she had met the people she now called her family. She would miss them terribly, she would always keep them in her heart, she would love them forever, but she was with Janey now, and Janey had been her home first.   

 

Janey pulled away and leaned back so she could stare up into Phryne’s face, her twinkling eyes sobering suddenly, mirroring the wisdom and untold secrets of millennia that she now possessed.

 

“Phryne, I know that you want to stay here forever with me now,” she spoke intently. “And that would be so wonderful, being able to play pirate princesses with you again! I’m ever so glad you were able to come here so that I could see you again! And, so I could tell you that what happened to me wasn’t your fault! But, you can’t stop now.”

 

“What are you talking about, Janey? I’ve already arrived! I’ve passed on, haven’t I?”

 

“No, Phryne, not quite yet. This is a beautiful place,” her sister continued. “But, it’s more like a waiting room. Or a really big hallway, really. Not everyone actually passes through here. Only some people. The special ones!” The twinkling in Janey’s eyes began to shine again.

 

“I don’t understand, Janey.”

 

Her sister’s seemingly tiny hand reached up to cup Phryne’s cheek tenderly in that unique way that only children can do. A movement containing such wonder and pure love.

 

“Aw, my wonderful big sister! Don’t you know how special you are? You had asked for a second chance! So, now it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want it! You’ve always liked having choices. So now you get to choose whether to stay here forever...or whether or not you want to go back. To your other family who still needs you.”

 

Phryne kissed her sister’s hand as tears welled up in her eyes. And, suddenly, the sense of homesickness that she had always associated with her grief and longing for her sister returned in full force. It pervaded her entire being. But, she was with her sister again, yet the longing only became stronger. Suddenly, her heart began to ache severely for the sound of another, distinct voice, and the feeling of another hand upon her skin.

 

Janey smiled as she watched the puzzle pieces come together in her beloved older sister’s eyes. She nodded gently in understanding, and moved her hand down to grasp Phryne’s hand and looked at the bracelet that had begun to reflect the beautiful sunshine embracing them both.

 

“Now that you know where I am, Phryne, you come on back later, Sis!” She grasped both of her sister’s hands and squeezed them tightly. “I’ll always be waiting for you, and can’t wait until we’ll be together again eventually. But, only when it’s the right time. Only _after_ you’ve lived a long, happy life with all the other people you love so dearly. And who love you and need you now more than ever!”

 

“Jack!” Phryne whispered. “Jane, Dot, everyone…”

 

“Yes, Phryne. Don’t let anything or anyone stop you now, not me or the memories of what happened to me.”

 

“Are you sure, Janey?” Phryne pulled Janey back into her arms. “Are you sure you’ll be all right here without me?”

 

“Of course, silly! Plus, you have to go and help the inspector some more. You have to keep protecting everyone else from all the other mean people. All the other little girls and boys who will need you. Like Jane.”

 

“Oh, Janey!” Phryne kissed the top of her sister’s golden head before letting her go enough to stand up straight. “I can’t wait to come back again some day. I’ll always be thinking of you.”

 

“I know, Sis. I can always feel it when you do. I hope that now, you’ll be able to feel it when I think of you too!”

 

“How do I return then?” Phryne glanced around her quickly, as though a door or something would suddenly materialize.

 

Janey giggled as she watched her sister’s antics. “Easy-peasey! You just say the magic password, silly!”

 

Phryne couldn’t help grinning back in return. She reached out to playfully tug on one of her sister’s plaited braids. “All right then, Miss Know-It-All! What’s the secret password?”

 

Janey suddenly leaned over to wrap her little arms about Phryne’s waist again. She looked up at her sister again and whispered with a great big smile stretching her beloved face.

 

“It’s ‘love’! When you’re ready to go, just think of the place and the people that you love much more than anything or anyone else! Then, you just say the word.”

 

“I wish I could be in two places at once then,” Phryne admitted as she hugged the little girl again.

 

“No, you don’t,” Janey replied. “You’ve already tried that, silly, remember?”

 

“You, cheeky monkey!” Again, Phryne straightened up after releasing Janey. She held onto her sister’s hand, however, and beamed her full wattage smile, receiving one back in equal measure.

 

“Thank you, Janey. Thank you for looking out for me. I-I can’t wait to see you again some day!”

 

“I know, Sis. Me too. Now, hurry up!”

 

“I’ve never needed to be told that by anyone else yet.”

 

“That’s because they’re not me! I love you, Phryne!”

 

“I love you too, Janey!”

 

The two sister joined hands once again, and with their other, they both reached instinctively for Jane’s bracelet on Phryne’s wrist.

  
“I love you,” they both spoke at the same time.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, you've all been bringing us to tears ourselves with your touching comments regarding our last chapter! As always, thank you so much for your incredible support and encouragement, we are humbled that our words have been able to evoke so many deep emotions. 
> 
> And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...Phryne's triumphant return! 
> 
> And since her return would, of course, be quite momentous, we've decided to split it into TWO chapters for your reading enjoyment. Hope this next installment brings you some long-awaited smiles and fluffy feelings!

_Tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time_   
_I feel alive and the world I'll turn it inside out - yeah_   
_And floating around in ecstasy_   
_So don't stop me now don't stop me_   
_'Cause I'm having a good time having a good time_   
  
_I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky_   
_Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity_   
_I'm a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva_   
_I'm gonna go go go_  
 _There's no stopping me_

-Queen, Don’t Stop Me Now

 

 

Oblivious to the way the sides of Phryne’s dressing chair were digging into the sides of his larger frame, Jack Robinson was doing his best to avoid the inexplicable and suffocating pain threatening to crush the functioning of his heart. His hand absent-mindedly gripped one of the many bottles of her luxurious French perfume as he gazed lifelessly out the window. The bright sunshine pierced him mockingly as he slammed the bottle down and hunched over to cover his face and clench his teeth against yet another wave of grief erupting throughout his entire being.

 

He was alone in the room now. Well, he was alone with the shell of what had once been the most vibrant being he had ever known. After Mac and the entire team of St Benedict’s staff had failed to do what they could to revive Phryne, they had ushered out Jane, and Dot (the maid had arrived with Mac). The two younger women had understandably become overcome with hysterical weeping. The medical team and Wardlow staff had then turned their attention to aiding the girls below.

 

Only Jack remained now contemplating the unbearable reality that he had been avoiding for the past six weeks. She couldn’t be gone. Such a life force simply couldn’t just vanish like that! Even as his mind and experience with countless corpses grimly told him otherwise, Jack’s heart and will continued to rebel against the status quo.

 

He slid out of the uncomfortable chair, and slid to his knees next to Phryne’s bedside, reaching again for her still hand, when he glanced up as something caught his eye. It was slightly hidden behind what he recognized as Phryne’s beige driving coat that had been flung haphazardly onto a hook. The sleeve peeked out just behind the opened internal door to her room that he suspected led to her extensive wardrobe. Rising to his feet, he woodenly walked over to caress the coat that still bore her lingering fragrance. It was the one he had seen her wear countless times. The one she had been wearing only a few weeks ago when they had attended the footie match where he had wrapped his Abbotsford scarf around her beautiful neck.

 

The scarf. That was what had caught his attention initially. It was hanging on the same hook just beneath her coat. He slowly reached out to remove it from behind the door and held it up to his nose to again breathe in her scent. Realizing how foolhardy that action was, Jack rumbled out a deep sob as his mind replayed every precious memory of that moment when the two of them had managed to say so much without a word. It hadn’t mattered that they were being watched by his ex-wife and ex-father-in-law, or that a match had been happening. It didn’t matter that the stadium had erupted in thunderous noise. All that mattered was her and him. That was all that ever mattered, he knew. But, now, it was too late. She’d never again hear him tell her what he kept holding back from again.

 

“I love you, Phryne,” he mumbled brokenly into the scarf. “And, I always will until I see you again some day.”

 

“Jack?” Her voice called out to him softly and suddenly.

 

Oh god, he was beginning to hallucinate for certain now! He knew that had to be the case because he had seen her spirit self disappear before his very eyes. Then, he had uselessly felt for a pulse on her remaining body that would beat no more.

 

“Jack, is that you? Are you there?” The voice grew stronger and more urgent. Then, suddenly, another scent reached his nose. It smelled faintly of...vanilla?

 

He whirled around, and for the first time he could ever recall, he felt very close to passing out at the sight before him. Her glorious eyes were open! She was blinking them at him rapidly with a slight frown of confusion and disorientation. Before he could think any further, he rushed over to the bed, and again knelt down at its side. He tried to take her hand when he realized he was still clutching his footie scarf. He let go and gripped her hand incredulously.

 

“Phryne! You’re back! You’re awake! You’re...whole again!”

 

When she saw that it was indeed the inspector, her expression turned to one of pure relief, and that adorable mixture of delight and mischief, that her features often held more often than not when she gazed at him of late. He could barely contain his joy at the fact that she was gazing at him again at all! From her corporeal eyes, no less! Those same eyes flickered down towards the object she noticed he was still clutching with his other hand.

 

“Well, Inspector, if you had wanted your scarf back,” she rasped out from her recently unused voice box. “All you had to do was ask. Although, I’ve grown rather partial to it...and its owner, I might add.”

 

Fighting back the tears again, this time ones of utter happiness, Jack quirked the side of his lips as his eyes drank in the sight of his beautiful partner’s familiar saucy smirk.

 

“I’m sure we could work out some type of shared custody arrangement, Miss Fisher,” he responded. “What say you?”

 

She eagerly signalled her agreement by wrapping her pale arms around his neck, and pulling him as close to her as she could manage in her weakened state. He complied by gently sliding his arm under her neck to support her head and caressing her warm cheek with his other hand. They then wordlessly communicated all that they had experienced during their nearly eternal separation with their eyes before their lips took over.

 

They stayed that way for quite some time until Jack pulled back reluctantly. “I don’t want to hurt you, Phryne,” he explained when he noticed the frown on her expression the moment their skin stopped touching. “As much as I would love to stay here with you, I think we should inform the others. I also think it would be best to have Doctor MacMillan examine you, just to be on the safe side.”

 

“Oh, dear Jane and Dot!” Phryne nuzzled her head against the comfort of Jack’s arm on her pillow. “Yes, please go tell them at once, Jack, the poor lambs! And Mac and Aunt Prudence and the others.”

 

He nodded whilst gently sliding his arm away, making sure to tuck the covers securely around her again. She stopped him from pulling his scarf away, however, by pulling on it from his grasp. “Joint custody, remember?” She then reached up with her other hand to tug him back down to herself by his tie.

 

He grinned outright at that before giving in to one final kiss. He then brushed the hair back from her eyes before sitting up and straightening his tie and suit and rising slowly to his feet.

 

“Don’t be long, Inspector!” She called out to him as he made his way to the main door of her boudoir.

  
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Miss Fisher.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... here it is! The final chapter! We hope you enjoy it, and that it was worth the tears and the suffering. This is our way to make it up to you for all the cliffhangers!

_I'm taking my ride with destiny_  
_Willing to play my part_  
_Living with painful memories_  
_Loving with all my heart_  
_Made in heaven, made in heaven_ _  
_ It was all meant to be

 

-Queen, Made in Heaven

 

How many times had they shared nightcaps? They had lost count. Their little after-case tradition had started early on their acquaintance, and it had become a substantial part of their relationship, as crime solving partners first and as friends later. There was something intimately beautiful about it, the way they both let down their guard and became rawly honest, almost emotionally naked in the presence of the other. There were no secrets there when they shared a drink alone in her parlour, be it a glass of expensive champagne or something less bubblier, like a fine whisky. They were themselves more than ever in those precious moments they could call their own, when they played draughts in silence or discussed a wide variety of topics, from classical music, and literature to politics, from modern day jazz to murders and autopsies. Past, present and future, they discussed that, too. And the more they talked about the things in their hearts, the more they fell for each other, nightcap after nightcap.

 

So it was natural that she would want to share a nightcap with him after everything they’d gone through. It was, after all, what they were used to doing after complicated cases. And had this one had been one hell (and a slice of heaven?) of an experience! It deserved to end with its own nightcap.

 

A very relieved, very surprised Mac had given Jack permission to carry Miss Fisher down to the parlour. She hadn’t wanted to stay in bed a minute longer. She had been there for a month and a half. She, the Honourable Phryne Fisher, quiet and unmoving for six weeks! It felt outrageous.

 

She knew she couldn’t be up and about as if nothing had happened- she was still weak, and she could feel it. But she wouldn’t lay around in bed, she’d had enough of that for a very long while!

 

The only activity she had in mind that involved a bed (especially if it involved a certain detective inspector, of course) was quite the opposite of resting (and the bed wasn’t even necessary, she was just considering it because she guessed the other part would feel more comfortable if things were to happen on a bed, at least the few first times.) She wasn’t going to act all reckless the same day she’d awoken from a six week long coma, but she wasn’t going to take a nap either.

 

She had needed to be surrounded by family, by the people she loved and those that hadn’t given up on her. The people that had supported her through this terrible ordeal and had nursed her back to health, back to the world where she belonged with them and they with her.

 

Mr. Butler, God bless the man, had made a fresh pot of warm tea and delicious sandwiches and finger food for everyone, and so they had gathered together at the parlour to enjoy the little feast and celebrate Phryne’s miraculous recovery. There had been laughter, and tears of joy, and it had been very emotional for everyone: they had never thought they’d be together again like that, with her as the centre of attention.

 

Even though she’d looked tired and, so very pale without a drop of makeup on her exotic features, she had been radiant and beautiful, shining with her own light. There was something about her that was so much more than the clothes and makeup she wore or how she styled her hair. She was as vibrant and exuberant wrapped up in a silk robe as she was when attired with the finest clothing one could shop for in any European capital city.

 

She had thanked every single one of them for their support and for the risks they had run to help her. She had recognized Dot’s bravery especially, and the young girl had been moved to tears by the words Phryne said to her.

 

“Oh, Miss! We all knew that you would have done the same for us, we know that,” her faithful companion had told her. “Any one of us would always be willing to go any great lengths to help you, Miss!”

 

“I only have words of gratitude for you all,” Phryne had insisted, her voice a little heavy with emotion. “What you all did,” she had taken Jane’s hand in hers (the girl had been sitting by her side) and squeezed it affectionately “was an enormous gesture of love and loyalty, and I couldn’t be more thankful.”

 

“We learned from the best, Miss,” Cec had said, “about loyalty and all that malarkey. You taught us how important that was. You’re the most loyal person we’ve ever known. Right, mate?”

 

“Absolutely,” Bert had agreed. “You would have done the same for us, right? Specially if it involved driving a stolen vehicle at an indecent speed,” Bert had stopped mid laughter when he’d seen the look on the Inspector’s face. Jack hadn’t said anything, but his facial expression had been enough for them to change the subject, and the topic of motor vehicles had been avoided from then on.

 

“Miss Phryne, do you think Aunt Prudence will be cross at me for a long time?” Jane had asked her. “She did look cross when she left. Relieved, yes, but cross. She didn’t want to stay to celebrate with us, so she must still be upset.”

 

“Jane,” Phryne had said, taking a deep breath “my aunt had very good intentions, but she was making choices based on what she would have wanted, and not what I would have wanted. Even with all my close friends, friends that I consider to be a part of my family,” they had all smiled warmingly at that statement, “telling her that I’d rather not be moved to St. Benedict’s if I could have a say in it, she decided to ignore what I would have wanted and tried to have things happen her way.

 

“She didn’t respect what would have been my will, and I am happy I had brave, strong people advocate on my behalf. You protected me, you fought for what I would have fought for. I couldn’t be prouder of you all, or any more grateful, and I am sorry if my aunt being cross at any of you brings you any discomfort, but she should have respected me first.

 

“Besides,” she had concluded “she isn’t known to stay cross for long. She will soon need me to donate money to a charity of sorts, which I will do willingly, and all will be forgiven and forgotten. She may look stern and made of stone, but her heart is actually softer than she lets on.”

 

Phryne knew, however, that she would have to make a number of decisions, and that those decisions would lead to changes. Important changes. It wasn’t something she’d discuss with the rest of the gang present, for it was a rather private and delicate matter for a certain pair of ears only. She’d have time to talk with him about these and other things. In fact, she suspected that the inspector and her would have all the time in the world from now on.

 

When the time for nightcaps arrived, they were left alone, Miss Fisher and Inspector Robinson. Jane and Dot, completely exhausted both physically and emotionally, retired to their bedrooms, as did Mr. Butler.

 

And, Cec, Bert and Mac left presumably to each go to their homes, though if Phryne really knew any of them (which she did) she’d be betting her airplane that they had taken the celebration somewhere else, a pub perhaps? It was still too early for them to call it a night, and under any other circumstances Phryne would have probably joined them.

 

But, she wanted to talk to Jack alone about things that were too important. And, besides, Mac would have never allowed her to be up and out drinking just like that. The woman loved her liquor as much as Phryne did, but as a professional doctor she knew where to draw the line.

 

“I can’t believe this nightmare is over.” Jack’s hoarse voice distracted Phryne from her thoughts.

 

“I can’t, either,” she admitted. And then, after a moment’s pause, she let out the words she’d been dying to tell him ever since she’d woken up from the coma:

 

“I saw her there.”

 

He didn’t need to ask who _she_ was, for he knew perfectly well who Miss Fisher was talking about. She had been hearing her voice hours before the cardiac arrest. She had been thinking about her every day for the last twenty years or so, her memory never far from her mind. It had been the greatest loss she had suffered, greater than any pain she had ever felt. It had marked her, shaped her from an early age. During the lapse of time he had been overcome by the unbearable notion of having lost her, he had tried to find some consolation in knowing at least she had been finally reunited with her beloved little sister.

 

“You saw Janey,” he simply said.

 

“She was there, waiting for me in the last place I saw her when we were children, on the day that monster took her away. She looked exactly like she was before… before her death.”

 

It was something difficult to tell, but she knew she had to share this with him. At the moment, he was the only person she knew who could understand this, what it meant and how it had felt. He would understand how important it was for her, because he knew what Janey represented, how much she had loved her, and how very sorry she’d been. He knew of the remorse and guilt she had felt upon learning that it was her whom Foyle was truly after. He understood Phryne, sometimes even better than she understood herself, she suspected. If there was anyone she needed to pour her soul to, tear her heart open for, and share this with, then that someone was Detective Inspector Jack Robinson.

 

“She told me she knew how guilty I felt, but that I didn’t have to,” there were tears gathering in her eyes now. Jack took her hand in his and held it delicately. He didn’t say anything, he just waited until she was ready to resume talking. They had, after all, all the time in the world. All the time they would need and more. He had nowhere else to go, there was no place he’d rather be than right there with her.

 

“She giggled and held me and it was the most precious experience of my life,” she admitted. “She told me she’s been looking after me all these years, and that she kept sending people that she knew would be good for me. Like Mac, and Dot, and Jane.”

 

“And you,” she added. “She is very fond of you, Inspector.” They both smiled at this, and she could have sworn it was now Jack’s eyes that had tears in them. “She insists that she sent you because as a little boy you played pirates, just like us, and rode a bike! She thinks you are quite the catch, actually.”

 

“And am I, Miss Fisher?” he asked, half seriously, half teasingly.

 

“I could do worse, I suppose,” she said, feigning a lack of interest. And then they both laughed, and she looked at him adoringly, her eyes boring into the depths of his. “I felt so peaceful there, Jack. I knew I would miss you all if I stayed there with her, but if I hadn’t been given a different choice, a second chance, I wouldn’t have been unhappy there with her. You do understand me, right?”

 

“I do, Miss Fisher”  

 

Of course he did. He always did. She wouldn’t have expected a different answer from him. Her Jack. Her inspector. Her partner, and friend, and now lover.

 

“She told me she’d be waiting for me, so when I’m an old lady that has lived a long, happy life we can reunite properly, and forever. And that, Jack,” she said “it’s what gives me the most peace. I know there is forever, someplace. Somewhere. And Janey will be there. She already is there,” she corrected herself “waiting for me. And I know she doesn’t blame me for what happened. She reassured me it wasn’t my fault, and now I know I must let go of the guilt. She thanked me for finding her, and I guess I should extend her gratitude to you as well, for you played an important role so she could rest in peace.”

 

“I would do it all over again, Phryne,” said Jack. “I wouldn’t hesitate to help you find your sister. I wouldn’t hesitate about anything that is us.”

 

She leaned over and kissed him. It was soft and slow, and she felt the same sense of belonging she had experienced every other time they had kissed. It was intimate, and romantic, and it made her feel like everything was alright in the world. Like she was home. He was her home, just like Janey  had been once. He was the home she had returned to.

 

“I wouldn’t hesitate, either, Inspector,” she said, her forehead pressed against his. “And I wouldn’t change a single thing of what happened, for it has brought us together and it has shown me and taught me a great deal of things. This experience has been worthy. And I also have you to thank for it. You were there with me, step by step, whilst I wandered all the while. Yet you never left me alone.”  

 

“You wouldn’t have left me alone, either,” he told her. “And I would always wander with you, Phryne,” his voice caught with the emotions he was feeling. “With you, I’d wander anywhere. Everywhere.”

 

He cupped her face gently and placed a kiss, first onto her forehead, then over each eyelid before trailing his normally stern-looking lips down to her neck and collarbone before tracing them back up to her slightly smudged scarlet lips. Only Miss Fisher wouldn’t let a severe case of comatose prevent her from looking a bit more like her usual self again! She eagerly opened her lips to allow him to deepen his kiss until something suddenly pricked her in the side.

 

“Ow,” she couldn’t help wincing, immediately causing Jack’s eyes to widen as he pulled back to watch her face with intense concern. “Something pricked me.”

 

They both glanced down to where she had instinctively reached for her side to see a thick envelope that had slid forgotten down the side of the chaise, its sharp corner reminding Phryne of its significance.

 

The inspector rescued the official-looking document with its red, waxed seal, careful to not let its edge graze against Phryne again as he pulled it up between them. He then looked at her quizzically when he saw his name officially emblazoned across the front of it: Senior Detective Inspector J. Robinson.

 

“I’d nearly forgotten,” she informed him mysteriously. “This is for you. Read it, Jack. Oh, you might need this.” She slid the edge of her silken robe up her leg slowly to reveal her sheathed dagger strapped prettily to her thigh. “Never hurts to be prepared!”

 

Brimming with curiosity, he slid the knife out and used it to cut through the ornate seal before handing it back to her. Sliding out a bundle of parchment papers, he began to read.

 

“Phryne,” his tone was filled with slight hesitation. “This is your final will and testament.”

“Very good, Inspector, full marks for that,” she teased before reaching out to playfully tweak his chin. “It’s my newly updated will, in fact, just freshly delivered from my solicitors’ Melbourne branch today. I’ve just been on the telephone to my personal solicitor in London this afternoon. I’d actually been planning to do so recently, but never had the opportunity until now...especially in light of recent events.”

 

Jack nodded slowly as he continued to read the document. Phryne had had the document revised stipulating that he and Doctor MacMillian were to be the executors of her will, instead of her father.

 

Before he could come up with a response, she slid a smaller letter out from her under her robe. This too also bore the exact ornate seal and was again addressed to him.

 

“There’s one other thing, Jack,” she stated in the tone he had learned to grow wary of. “I had the solicitors draw this up as well. No one else knows about it except for us. And it will only become legally binding if you’re willing to accept it.” This time she retrieved the dagger herself and presented it to him with her customary flourish.

 

With his interest piqued even more, the inspector again opened and read through the document, which was only one page long. Once he had finished scanning it, he read through it again once more before returning her intense gaze with a quirk of his expressive eyebrows. Phryne reached up to squeeze the hand resting along the back of the chaise.

 

“Jack, I have been thinking long and hard about this for quite awhile now. I wanted to have the opportunity to bring it up with you when it was the right moment. Well, I think this would certainly qualify, don’t you?”

 

Again, he slowly nodded in response absorbing the significance of the letter’s contents again.

 

“I’ve legally authorized what the solicitors call an ‘enduring power of attorney’ to you, Jack. That means that you will now have the ultimate decision-making power over everything that affects my person, such as my health, and my estate whenever I might be unable to do so. As much as I love them, I never want Aunt Prudence or either of my parents to be making decisions for me if I ever end up...incapacitated again.” She gripped his hand tightly again, waiting anxiously for his response.

 

Reading the words and hearing Phryne declaring them just now caused the inspector to drop the letter in his shock at the unexpected and momentous news. He cleared his throat several times from the emotions attempting to overwhelm him again. Blinking several times, Jack reached out his free hand to caress the side of her soft cheek that he hoped would never ever feel ice cold again. Not on his watch, if he could help it.

 

“Phryne,” he breathed her name like a prayer. “I’m overwhelmed and indescribably honoured that you’ve chosen me, of everyone you know, to be your voice if ever you were unable to speak for yourself again.”

 

“Of course it would be you, Jack,” her beautiful lips curved into a tender smile. “There’s no one else I would trust with my life, let alone my voice, like I do you. Well, Mac comes very close, of course, and I know that you would always trust her judgement as well. But, now that we’re together again, truly together, and no matter what happens from here on end, I will always trust _you_ , my honourable partner, friend...and beloved, to do what you felt was the best thing for me no matter what.”

 

After another searing kiss, Jack pulled away slightly and stood up to carefully move the important documents over to Phryne’s bureau that sat in the corner. He then returned to her side at the chaise, and made her an elaborate bow from the waist.

 

“Well, enduring power of attorney or not, Miss Fisher,” he straightened and then held out his hand to her. “At the moment, I’m still more fearful of bringing down the wrath of your aunt, Doctor MacMillan, not to mention your entire household if you were to catch a chill, let’s say, in this drafty parlour of yours tonight.”

 

“Oh, don’t let Mr Butler hear you say that,” she teased with a delighted expression lighting up her beautiful face with glee. “But, I certainly agree, Inspector, we mustn't give anyone any more ideas about having me transferred back to hospital, for instance.”

 

“Precisely! And, seeing how everyone else has retired for the evening, I suppose, I shall also have to play your night nurse, as well as your noble steed to transport you back up the stairs safely.”

 

“Indeed, Jack,” she agreed as he bent down to lift her back up into his arms and carefully made his way out the parlour and towards the stairs. “Have I told you how I’ve always been rather fond of riding? I’m also quite good at it.” At her suggestive tone, her noble steed sped up his course towards their final destination. Certainly, the patient was in no danger of catching any chills at all given the extreme temperatures that her boudoir eventually reached.

 

Later on, with the moonlight bathing them whilst they both lay spent and on the edge of peaceful dreams, Phryne felt tickled by a slight breeze against her cheek. Looking over at the window, she shifted slowly shifted out of Jack’s languid arms and slipped out of the bed.

 

Taking a few cautious steps over to her window, she was momentarily baffled when she realized that it remained closed. Suddenly, a large shooting star shot through the sky right before her eyes. She smiled knowingly.

 

“Thank you, Janey,” she whispered, lifting a hand to lay it against the cool plane of glass. “I love you, too.”

 

Turning around, she tiptoed her way back to the bed and slid back inside to the comforting warmth of her inspector’s arms. He mumbled her name fondly in his sleep before she tucked herself closely against him again.

 

She was finally home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here's to the end of another journey! We thank you all for walking with us along the way, encouraging us with your wonderful comments. We are sorry for all the angst and for all the tears we caused, but we're not THAT sorry. So we're happy to let you know that we will be posting a new collaboration soon!


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